Foreclosure pool!

[PoolDoc]

I would HIGHLY recommend that you leave it covered till you have lots of time and $5,000 ready to dedicate to the pool rehab.

The fact that it's still mostly full suggests that it may well be practical to re-hab rather than fill in. But the rest of it sounds like you've got a LOT of serious work ahead of you.

More than that, if you want help, you need to post pictures. You can do so using Flickr, Picasa, Google Drive, Webshots and simply linking to the photo.

Good luck!

[Flener]

I will upload pictures shortly. I know it will not be cheap to get it up and running, and if I can make that happen for $5,000 dollars it will be less than what I was expecting to spend. As far as lining it with fiberglass, does anyone here have any experience with that? Also the rusted metal strip, what is the purpose of that and where would you buy the stuff to replace it?

[PoolDoc]

I'm not going to try to figure out what the bits you're describing are, without pictures. I'd just be guessing, and wasting both your time and mine.

Regarding fiberglass: it can be done. I *think* it can be done well, but that's not what happened in the cases I saw. Since I haven't done the work myself, I don't know if the problem was bad materials, bad workmanship . . . or if it's just a case of a bad method of repair.

You have to remember that water WILL get between the new FG and the old plaster, and that tends to cause problems. If you succeed in bonding the FG to the old plaster, you *still* won't have a sound surface, since you have plaster delamination.

Pretty much *any* method of repair that doesn't involve getting down to sound and tight concrete or plaster is a PATCH, not a repair. I would not be surprised at all that there is someone -- either DIYer or tradesman -- who has done successful repairs with FG, but I haven't seen an account of it, or a 'how-to'.

One other point to consider: I've never seen a field applied gel-coat look anything like factory gel-coat. This is cosmetic, rather than structural, so it's up to you whether that's an issue or not. Again, my guess is that someone with the right methods and persistence could improve that, but it's not what I've seen happen.