Just a word of caution. I am new to pools but I know several people in our town ( at least 5) who have above ground pools and the sand has filtered down through the cracks below their pool and now there are valleys or channels below their liner where the sand left and ran down the cracks when the ground got dry and cracked during the hot summer months.

This might be only a problem in our soil. Black land. Cotton country. Our town was know for the sign in front of the rail road station that said "Welcome to Greenville, Home of the Blackest Land and the Whitest People" It's long been taken down, but their are still post cards floating around on ebay and if you google you will find all sorts of references to Greenville and the sign.

But back to what I was saying is so many people had their pools put in professionally and now they trip in their own pool because of the valleys in their liner. If your ground cracks at all, I would try and put down some heavy landscape fabric and 6 mil plastic before you lay your sand so the sand will stay where you put it. I might even put both down. I personally used a 2" Styrofoam bottom with the gorilla pad on top of it and love it. I also put the foam pad cove and the thick wall foam which I like a lot too. The wall foam does not come all the way to the top because I have 54" walls and you can really feel the difference between the hard walls and the soft walls. I didn't think that small of thickness of foam would make so much difference to the touch, but it does. Anyway, my 2-cents on laying something down before you lay your sand. I'm sure it will give a little but not run out if your ground cracks from the heat and here in Texas, we have already been warned about triple digits for this summer. Glad I got my pool up. We love it.

Aranon.