Getting started

[PoolDoc]

You can't coat a bad coating -- paint, fiberglass, plaster, whatever -- you have to remove it and then replace it.

Unless you are going to try to do-it-yourself, the ONLY way to answer the "how much" question is to get quotes. But, let me offer a caution: be VERY careful not to simply pick the lowest price; make sure you verify that the person offering the price CAN and WILL do a good job.

Many pool contractors are 'hungry' these days, and are susceptible to taking work they don't really know how to do, in order to keep going. I can't blame them for that: I have many, many times taken on tasks I'd never done before. In fact, I'm about to begin some work of that sort in the next month. By God's grace, I've usually been successful, but I've seen many, many cases that were not.

I will be doing a major (8,000 sft -- 200,000 gallons pool) epoxy recoat & leak repair in spring 2013, on a commercial customer's pool. The cost will probably be ~ $28,000, even though they just had the pool redone in spring 2010. The problem was, I had quoted that work at $20,000, and they took my quote and work description and shopped it around. They found someone who claimed they'd do a job "just as good" for $11,000. It was a mess, and hurt both my customer and the contractor, who I understand went bankrupt. Now, my customer is going to pay MORE for me to clean up the mess, but only partially. So they will end up spending around $39,000 for $20,000 worth of work . . . and the outcome will not be as good as it would have been if they'd let me have it originally!

This sort of thing is very, very common.

By the way, I've told the club manager that I will NOT give them any detailed specs this time, that his board can shop around, and he agreed! Way too many contractors try to use a more experienced contractor's bid offering as a set of instructions for them to follow! Do NOT let that happen to you!