Vinyl Liner Floating, Bulging Walls in Inground Pool

[FormerBromineUser]

Well, update when you can. In the meantime, I would do everything you can to keep water from getting under the bottom, so I wouldn't push down. Sides are much easier to fix!

[Wapak]

You bet. Thank you so much for your help, I will update here with any progress!

[JimK]

We've had our liner float/bulge a couple times due to big rain events. Fortunately we didn't end up with any wrinkles; the liner settled back into place as the surrounding ground water receded.

Formerbromineuser gave some great suggestions for dealing with wrinkles.

I can only suggest to do your best to guide the liner back into place as the groundwater recedes (hopefully soon).

[FormerBromineUser]

The more I think about it, the more I am thinking that most of the water got behind the liner through the coping and not primarily from groundwater. I am thinking that because you have very few bottom issues.

Do you think your water level got above the coping liner seam during the storm?

If so, I am thinking that as soon as the rain slows down a bit, you need to reduce the amount of water behind the walls before it gets under the bottom.

Leave a bit in so you can still shift the liner to get it back in place. Maybe two people working. One inside pushing/lifting up, and one outside slowly siphoning (or even adding if you need more shift).

[Wapak]

http://i1148.photobucket.com/albums/...pslip1s601.jpg

I have some good news!

I mentioned in my earlier post, i had a standing puddle of water surrounding my concrete deck. My pool is surrounded with a top layer of river rock over hard soil. It was my thinking that if i could possibly eliminate some of that surface water it would help.

So, as soon as it stopped raining, which luckily we did not get much today, i took my pool vacuum hose, hooked it up to my wall skimmer, and set the end down into a little makeshift ditch I had made in the rocks. The ditch immediately filled up with water and stuck the end in it. I set my pump on half and half, and kept on filter; half the water was coming from my deep end and the other half from this ditch in the rocks.

it was my thinking that I could try to just transfer the water from outside of my liner to inside my liner at a slow pace by just drawing the water to this side of my concrete deck that seems to hold alot of water. Without removing my liner at all.

I didnt expect the results i got! COMPLETE FIX WITHIN 3 HOURS! I just let the hose continue to draw water and it kept pouring into the hole, it seems to have drawn and transfered all the water outside my liner, to inside equalizing the pressure. Once it was dry ditch drawing no water i stopped.

While it was doing this, i did as you mentioned, and by hand kept pushing wrinkles out slowly from bottom to top.

It surprised me that this worked, but it did-I put a picture on here of how i dug my ditch in the rocks (was barely 4 inches deep) and then laid the end of the hose in the water. the water that was drawing was amazingly clear, so like i said i went ahead and had it running through my skimmer then filter.

The end result after the hose was no longer drawing any water was just three little tiny wrinkles, but they really seem to still be small bubbles in two of my corners, bout 3 inches long--i need to work those out, but unbelievable that my walls and floor are back to ok and normal-NO BULGES!

I will keep you posted if this does not hold, but thankfully we are expected to have somewhat dry weather the next couple days.

thank you all for your help so far, I appreciate it!

[JimK]

Sweet!

[FormerBromineUser]

That's super!!! I have read your post several times and I am not understanding something.

You were siphoning off water into your ditch, but where were you pulling the water from? Did you pop the liner out of the coping? It sounds like you had it in your skimmer? What am I not getting?

[Wapak]

Sorry for all the spelling errors in my previous post...my phone is not the best to type on but i hope that explained what i did a little better!

The photo shows the end of my vacuum hose with no vacuum head attached, laying in the puddle of water which formed in the small hole/ditch i dug with my hands in the river rock surrounding my concrete deck. the other end of hose was attached into my skimmer!

I worked on easily working the liner and wrinkles for about 2-3 hrs while the filter pumped ...i stopped when it got darker and the hose was no longer drawing water from my hole/ditch.

Yep i felt the small ones yet to work out and as of right now they werent a hard type crease more like a bubble. Im going to get those out in am. They are located in the two corners of my return jets.

A drain tile is definetly something i will do in future. I know the rain we had was really rare but i sure would like to avoid this in the future!

[FormerBromineUser]

No worries about the typos! And no worries about your explanation either. Jim understood you; it was just me. It's one of the reasons I asked Jim to take a peek at your thread. I'm not a real handy kinda gal so my brain doesn't always do mechanics easily... I aced all my chemistry and physics classes, but always struggled in lab. One of my degrees is in Geology, and the course I found most difficult was Geological Engineering. I am babbling now....

Let us know how it goes in the morning. They are forecasting 2 more weeks of rain here in the Chicago area. Lordy!

[Wapak]

Well im happy to report, i checked the pool this am expecting the need to work the few remaining small wrinkles i had left up in the shallow area, and they were already gone. So, as of right now, at this point, the liner is wrinkle free and had no movement or shift as near as i can tell!

I am inclined to believe that it was water running inward, towards and behind my liner coping that caused this, not a rise in the ground water as you said.

The walls bulged out huge, but it never affected my bottom, so I do think its reasonable to assume the water headed downward, from a tremendous amount of rain, overfilling the area surrounding my pool, not up from a rise in the ground water table. I think by keeping my pool as full as i could and still operate through this helped to keep as much pressure in the bottom to stop the water from continuing further down behind the liner.

I must tell you it was just a fluke idea I had regarding the siphoning of surface water showing around my pool in the rocks using my vac hose...I sure didnt expect it to fix this, but once i thought about it, it made sense that it did: the water basically was taken out from behind the liner the same way as it probably made its way there...

Anyways, thank you so much for your advice and responses, i certainly appreciate it, and I really, really hope things go great with your own pools this season!

FYI-finally a sunny day here in West Central OHIO!