Hello everyone.
I own a 45yr old pool. 18x32 oval,concrete bottom with hopper being 9ft. fiberglass wall pannels. I painted it 3yrs ago. I also painted it 8yrs before that with no problems. Here is what I'm up against. I had a leak last year. It would come and go. When it was leaking, it was a half inch a day but sometimes it would just stop leaking. I already replace the 2 inlet piping all the way to the pump 5yrs ago. At the end of the pool season last year it started leaking so I thought let it leak and lets see where the water ends up so I know where I'm looking (I did the food coloring around everything i could think of at the end of the year with no results)
So i let the pool leak and leak with no visible water anywhere. I put the cover on it after i winterwise it. I thought lets just see where it ends up. After quite some time, the water ended up going below the shallow end. I let it go till this pool season. I live in the St. Louis area. We had a couple of bad hail storm and 12" of rain in one week.
When I uncovered the pool last week. The paint on the flat surfaces must of got hit with hail (little round holes everywhere) and water must have gotten underneath and popped the paint up. it Popped a lot of paint. When i uncovered it the water was drained all the way down to 18" in the hopper. I found a leak in the concrete. It is a 1" hole on the (slanted/flat side going from shallow end to the deep end) of the hopper.The paint popped off the 1" hole or else i have no idea how i would have found it. You can see the water mark from the winter and the hole is right above it. I can stick my small finger in it. Ive been power washing for the last few days with an aggressive osculating head that i would use to get algae off of sidewalks. I got a LOT of loose paint off the flat surfaces . The hopper walls and bottom of hopper are not affected.
I have two questions well three lol how can i post pics on here? Can I fill the 1" hole with epoxy to fix it? My other question is since i have a lot of paint off and bare concrete on the flat surfaces (the edges of the pool are still in great shape where the fiberglass walls meet the concrete bottom). I've been using Olympic Zeron Epoxy Paint. Would you suggest since i have big patches of bare concrete to use Olypic Gunzite rough surface primer to act like a leveler on the bare spots? Would i then put primer on the entire bottom pool surface so there is no color change or just use the primer on bare concrete only? Thank you for taking the time to read this. I wish I could post pics on here so you guys can see what I'm looking at. Thanks