In ground vinyl pool bottom finish quality

Hello all,

I am new here and have just had a 38' x 18 oval in-ground liner pool installed.
My concern is the finish on the cement pool bottom and what is acceptable as far as smoothness or deviation of high low areas. Overall the bottom looks fair IMO, however when you turn the pool light on it amplifies the waviness.

I have had two pools in the past, however I have never had a pool light in either of them so I do not know what to expect as far as a acceptable pool floor finish. Can someone shed some light on what is reasonable and what is getting to carried away with my expectations.

Thanks in advance, Victor from N.E. Georgia

+ It's quite common for vinyl pools to have uneven bottoms that don't show up till the lights on.

+ It is quite possible to install a pool bottom that is even, and doesn't have ripples, gouges or even foot prints.

+ The 'acceptability' of uneven pool bottoms seems to vary from one market to another. Craftsmanship tends to be lower in more remote or rural areas.

+ Whether you have any recourse or not, depends on your contract . . . and your contractor.

+ This is a really bad time of year to find out if your peers in NW Georgia have had similar problems. November forum traffic is a small fraction of what it is in June.

. . . membership upgraded.

Ben, thanks for your reply.

Yes with the temperature hovering around freezing and the holidays around the corner I doubt to many folks are thinking about swimming pools.
I just had the pool installed and finished over the last two months. The way I figured the fall is typically dry in the southeast and the end of the season would result in a more competitive price on the installation.
Overall I am happy with the installation, however I am a perfectionist and in construction myself so I am accustom to seeing flat polished slabs with mirror finishes.
Whats funny is while I was getting my hair cut yesterday I couldn't help but notice how the barbershop floor was so uneven and though I am just being to picky as the polished VCT tiles looked like the bottom of my pool with the light on. LOL

Is it possible for me to post pictures of my pool build without a membership upgrade or do I need to subscribe?

Sincerely Vic

In my experience, perfectionism and pools tend to come together in pools over $100,000 -- but not always even there. Early in my pool career, I had some experience with owners of new pools, and I dreaded encountering them after a series of mistakes put them into what I called the "toothbrush and magnifying glass" mode. Basically what would happen was that, after 2 or 3 mistakes (the threshold varied), the customer would shift into suspicious 'inspection' mode. Since I've never seen a flawless pool, unhappiness for both customer and contractor inevitably follows that mode shift.

In your case, without knowing your local market and seeing your pool bottom, I can't judge whether the unevenness in your pool bottom rises to the level of a "significant flaw". I can tell you that, so long as it's not severe, it's not a functional flaw, and won't affect the life or usability of your pool.

But, the fact remains that for a majority of IN-ground pool purchasers, the appearance of the pool is as an important feature as its function. (This is reversed with AG pools -- AG pools are actually *used* far more than typical residential in-ground pools!) Anyhow, this focus on appearance is a bit of an issue, since most pool builders that I know are fairly rough-hewn folk, who, in their own lives, focus more on the function than the appearance. (They may make a bit of an exception, in the case of their truck, their hunting rifle, or their girlfriend, but it's still generally true.)

The educated artsy-type who are dedicated to building beautiful pools do exist, but they are uncommon, and tend to be involved only with pools well over $100,000. (Having worked on some of those pools, I can assure you that some of their perfectionism does NOT necessarily extend to creating well designed and built equipment rooms!)

So . . . you can post pictures, by uploading them to Webshots, Google Drive or Plus, Flickr, etc, and then linking to them. OR, you can email them to me at poolforum@gmail.com.

But . . . unless the unevenness is really bad, my guess is that any fix is likely to be at your expense. Even then, your contractor may not be capable of holding a truly level pool bottom -- I know I'm not. It's a manual skill that takes both talent and experience, and the sort of people who can do it, usually are capable of doing other manual work well. Since vinyl pool builders tend to value fast workers over meticulous ones, there's a real question whether there's any pool worker in your area capable of holding that kind of grade.

Good luck!

Yes Ben I understand what you are saying and I have not been overly scrutinizing my pool builder.
I think my issue or concern with the finish of the pool bottom has been amplified as a result of the pool light.
I have never had a pool light in any of the two other pools in my life, just fiber optics which I though was pretty cool.
Anyway below is a link of some photos of my build. Hopefully they will load from my photo bucket account.
If not I may have to email them. Sincerely Vic

http://s29.photobucket.com/user/cuda...y/Pool%20build

The photos load fine, but they don't show the installed liner, illuminated by the light. I think that would be the relevant photo for this situation.

Sorry I do not have photos of the liner at this time.
I just figured I would post the one that I have of the build process for now.
The bad weather is supposed to blow out of here tonight and I will take additional photos tomorrow of the finished pool and liner.
Everyone have a happy turkey day and be safe.
Sincerely Vic

Hello all

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.
Well I was able to vacuum up the pool and take some photos of the liner, stairs and finished job.
First I will start with the liner as this is where my concerns was with the pool bottom surface finish.
Some of the photos are before I cleaned the leaves out so forgive me.

http://s29.photobucket.com/user/cuda...?sort=3&page=1

As you can see there is one wrinkle in the liner that I can hopefully get out in the spring by lowering the water level and using a couple toilet plungers to work it to the outer wall panel.

This second set shows the stairs.

http://s29.photobucket.com/user/cuda...?sort=3&page=1

I am not sure what to think as the stairs have to land on top of the metal wall panel so you cannot make them any lower than they were installed. Is it possible that they installed the wrong style stairs? It almost looks like these are supposed to be used with a finished concrete coping where the liner bead is instead of the white bull nose coping.

Finally here are a few of the finished pool and spa photos.

http://s29.photobucket.com/user/cuda...?sort=3&page=1

Overall on a scale of 1 to 10 ten being the best I would give it a solid 8 maybe 8.5, I am again a bit of a perfectionist so if it were perfect I would give it a 9.5. Any thoughts and comments are welcome.

Sincerely Vic