New pool owner - question on Diamond Brite pits

[famousdavis]

Hi all, I'm a new pool owner as of about six or seven weeks ago. We're enjoying having a pool very much (I live in South Florida).

Background: I tend to be obsessive about things.

Question: I like our new pool, of course, which as a beautiful Diamond Brite Super Blue finish. After waiting a little more than a month, we got a Barracude G3 to vacuum the pool. When I recently cleaned out the pump filter basket, I saw a few pieces of Diamond Brite in there -- I hadn't seen that before in the first 30 days of pool ownership. I wondered where it came from?

This morning, I think I figured it out. There a few places -- maybe a dozen or so -- in our pool which have tiny pits in them, where I supposed the Diamond Brite that was there got sucked up (maybe just broken off without suction). The pits aren't real deep, certainly not to the point where it exposes the pool shell -- it's about the depth of one of the pieces of blue aggregate crystal used in the plaster.

My question is, is this normal or abnormal? If it's normal, I won't sweat it. If it's abnormal, I'll bring it to the pool builder's attention.

Second question is a follow-up: what do you do with these pits? Just ignore them (they're small enough to do that)? Or do you use some sort of pool repair kit for these kinds of things?

Thanks

[Watermom]

Famousdavis,
This kind of question is one that may be able to be answered by some of our builder types or maybe by another member who has this type of finish. However, none of those people can see the getting started section of the forum and i don't think any of the mods know much about Diamond Brite. So, be patient and once your post is released to the general forum as opposed to this start up forum, hopefully you'll get some views by someone who may be able to help you.

[famousdavis]

Thanks Watermom. I'm curious now -- what kind of pool finishes do most people have? I thought Diamond Brite was kinda the standard way of finishing pools (and PebbleTec the upgraded choice). At least, those were the two of three options offered to me by my builder.

And keeping on topic, I've found a few more places where a pit has developed in the Diamond Brite finish. They're easy to spot now because it's a fleck of white instead the small pieces of colored stone that make up the pool finish. When I dive down to investigate, I can see a little pit now -- the original flecks of Diamond Brite crumbled away. No one else is noticing these things -- but they weren't the ones who paid for this new pool. ;-)

[PoolDoc]

I would call Diamond Brite and ask them . . . and then ask if you can record their statement that this is "normal" if they say it is.
http://www.sgm.cc/diamondbrite/index.html

If they won't say it's normal, for the record, then you've got your answer.

Personally, I have no idea; I've never even seen a pool with the stuff, though I know there are some in this area.

[famousdavis]

Thanks for the link, PoolDoc. I poked around at the SGM website and found their warranty details. #2 on the list of limitations reads, "Some loss of aggregate is expected, especially in a new installation: This is not to be considered a failure."

How much constitutes "some loss of aggregate"? Who knows? But the very, very little aggregate I've lost so far would seem to me to fall way, way below the threshold.

So I won't sweat it any longer. ;-)

[PoolDoc]

Glad you were able to work it out.