vermiculite repair?

My wife and I just recently bought a house with an inground pool. The pool was a wreck and it is only eight years old. The liner is torn to shreds and after pulling the remnants of the liner out and shoveling tons of rotting nasty leaves out of the bottom the vermiculite seems to be in pretty good shape other than a few spots. My question is should all of the vermiculite be the same consistency or does it degrade. In a few spots the vermiculite feels more spongy to the touch and to walk on, is that normal? Also the shallow end has a lot of little nicks and chips from the liner flailing around on it in the wind, should I skim coat the entire end with like a half inch of vermiculite? Do you need to do any prep work aside from cleaning or can you lay the vermiculite right on top of the old.

This is not a question most of us can help with. I'll ask Waste to take a look, if he can. Meanwhile, posting pictures, via Flickr, Webshots, Picasa or Photobucket would help.

Welcome to The Forum, sorry I've missed answering this til now!

Spongy areas of vermiculite are an indication of groundwater flowing through or under it :( Those areas should be removed and new material troweled in (there are some other precautions you may want to take).

In the shallow end, you can either patch each little spot or do the entire floor - it's probably easier to do the 'spot patching'.

If you want more info on this, just ask and I'll try to get back more quickly.