Printable View
A Google search brought me to this forum. I registered, and than found that the forum disappeared until I posted. So I will post, I was wondering if I took my pool down, could I redo the dirt under the floor to slope deeper in the middle? I would have to first remove a 3 or 4 inch base of sand I put there when I set it up. Thanks...
I'd guess that you can stretch the floor of your pool to maybe 3"-4" deeper in the center if you dish it smoothly from the sides to the center. I also think that trying to make it deeper near the sides would be a very bad idea and probably lead to a pool failure.
My opinion is that it is probably best to let Waste aka Ted (who is a pool installer) comment on this instead of Dave or I guessing since we neither one have any experience with this. We don't want to give advice that may not be good for your liner. I'll ask Waste to take a look at your question for you.
Welcome to the Pool Forum!
I'm not really sure how much experience Waste has installing 16' Intex Ultra Frame pools. His opinion is likely to be no better than mine or Watermom's (sorry if that's not true Ted). I've installed several Intex donuts (three of my own) and I expect the material of the Ultra Frame to be the same. I do, in fact, have positive experience dishing out the center of my intex pools.
I like Dave's answer! I appreciate Watermoms effort and concern for the correct manufactures position on the subject, I suspect it would be no. I also know that any answer pulled from a "forum on the internet" should be carefully considered. :) The fact is, my boys are getting bigger. I will need a deeper pool soon. I thought a few days work might prolong my current pools life another year. Thanks for the replies, I will now nose around in the chemical sections. Thanks again!Quote:
Originally Posted by Watermom
membership upgraded. -ben
This question produced a little bit of controversy, so I check things out myself, using the caternary curve calculator, here:
http://www.spaceagecontrol.com/calcc...tton=Calculate
The actual curve will depend on how carefully you grade things, but if you grade them evenly, it should approach, at such a small displacement, a caternary curve very closely.
At the 4" dishing Dave suggested, the ∆length (change in the diameter of the pool) is only 1/4 of an inch. I don't think that would have any detectible effect on the pool.
Even at 8" -- double what Dave suggested -- the ∆ length is 0.07ft, or 3/4in. And, with an Intex metal frame or blow-up pool, I suspect you won't be able detect a 3/4" ∆ in the diameter of the pool at the top compared to the bottom.
But you have to be careful. It's possible that if you dish the pool 12", you might get a bit of wrinkling, depending on how elastic the Intex fabric is. At a 12" dish, you'd increase ∆length (diameter) by 2"; that might be a problem, especially if the fabric is very inelastic.
I'm no expert on these things but I'm thinking about the physics of what's going on here. If you "dish" the bottom of the pool, you're effectively placing lateral stress on the bottom of the liner, from the edges towards the center. That extra stress is going to tug on the seam between the sides and bottom, which could cause the seam to catastrophically fail.
If you were planning on replacing the pool in the next 12 months anyway, then maybe the risk is worth it if your pool is sited in a location where a sudden flood won't cause any damage. Me, I've got neighbors with landscaping right on the other side of the fence so I can't take those risks :)
Only if the stress causes the material to exceed the elastic limit -- something that's pretty unlikely in a PVC fabric strained by only 1/4" over 16'. Also, because the dishing will occur prior to filling, any tension that does approach the elastic limit will be more likely to simply slide the fabric in toward the center. This could cause the wrinkling I mentioned, but not necessarily put a great deal of tension on the seams.Quote:
Originally Posted by IGnatius T Foobar