getting a head start on liner replacement

[waste]

Always happy to share my experience with the members of this forum

Does your husband have any troweling experience?

Regardless, you'll want a wood float and a pool trowel (the pool trowel is oval rather than rectangular). Use a garden rake to move the sand to 'roughly' level and at the desired height (if you don't have a transit, you can just run a string across the the pool and measure down from that to find the desired grade). Wet the sand with a garden hose ('mist' and 'shower' settings work best), you want the sand moist but not soaking. Use the wood float to first smooth and then tamp the sand and the trowel to put the finishing smooth on the sand. Work from the walls into the pool and leave an aisle back to the ladder (i.e. don't trowel yourself into a 'corner' with no way out of the pool)

To get the bevel at the bottom of the wall right, I've both measure down from the top of the wall and made a magic marker line on my wood float. I like the marking of the float because that way I can sink the float down to the bottom of the wall, to check how high the sand is on the wall and then, put the float against the wall and sight down to see how far out from the wall I am and adjust accordingly. (I like to play it safe and, if the liner calls for a 6" bevel, I mark the float at ~ 5 1/2" -it's better to be a little low on the floor of a liner pool).

There's the first installment on the tips & tricks. If you need clarification on anything or want a little more, just let me know.



[edit] The previous 2 posts weren't there when I started my response - I'm a poor and S-L-O-W typist.

You got the right sand 8) [/edit]

[Watermom]

Ted,
This will be so helpful for this member. Actually, I was thinking that when you have time, you should write a liner replacement guide and we'll stick it at the top of the forum. That will save you from repeating over and over and it will be a great resource for a lot of our members. Whatcha think?

(I know right now is busy season for you so maybe this could be a fall project for you if there is no time to do it now?)

[donnaspool]

Heres the thing. The sand is more like cement. My husband had to use a metal rake to scratch the surface manytimes to get loose enough sand to fill in a couple of grapefruit sized holes.
Should he wet it down first?

[waste]

Nope, the water is only to help compact fresh sand.

If the floor is already to grade, leave it be and fill the holes/ dips with new sand. It sounds like your floor is 100% compacted, don't mess with any areas that aren't too high, but fill in any low spots. Don't do any more work than you need to do!


I'm following this thread, so feel free to ask any questions you have.

[donnaspool]

Hopefully you will not regret that last sentance, here the first question?

What am I leveling the bottom of the floor to?

should I try to make it even with the top of the bottom rail? or maybel level with highest point {which may reduce the size of the wedge of dirt that buts up against the side wall)?

Sorry for asking so many questions about what is probably a very simple task to someone who knows what they are doing?

thanks

[donnaspool]

HELP HELP HELP

Sand and cove went great and looks fine. Liner is beaded new liner was called a uni-bead and should have fit. After a few attempts figured out how to get bead to drop in track fairly easily but when we reached the starting point we still had about 10 inches of extra material. Unhooked everything and second time we triedhooking bead in a star pattern going back and forth accross pool. When we got to the last few sections we still had the same problem only now instead of one larg e piece of extra material we have several sections with just an inch or two extra. not sure what to do. Iam going to post this under a new heading as well. Trying to get set for daughters bday party in 1 week , help.

[Watermom]

Hopefully, Waste is still monitoring this thread, but I'll send a reminder email to him just in case he hasn't seen it.