ok, so today we finally pulled the old liner up and sure enough the foam cove was riddled with insect tunnels! it was termites!
Ive been researching online and it says this is more inclined to happen during a drought, though it can happen anytime in bad termite areas. Im in the south so I think Im in a bad area and last year we had a severe drought, even losing several mature trees. Also when we purchased this pool from a friend, my husband noticed some tunneling in the foam cove when we moved it from our friends house to ours. We didnt really inspect it closely or know what it meant as we were new to owning a pool. So there is also a chance there were already some termites in the cove and we just brought them to our house. Another possibility is that the dirt we used to level the pool area was from near my dads barn, which is very old and has termites.
Anyways I will not be using the foam pool cove again. I think they are more inclined to get in it though Im sure they will go anywhere.
From what I've read, TERMIDOR, seems to be the best stuff to apply to the area. Any thoughts?
Also some say that I should now put a serious barrier down to help protect the liner from the termites but other sites say waterproof barriers are usually not a good idea because they allow moisture to form under the liner (bc it sweats) and some barriers provide more ease of tunneling like the foam cove did...........Any thoughts on that as well?