New vinyl liner has indentions

[markeast]

Our new vinyl liner pool bottom has small indentions and a few spots that look like small objects sticking up. You can feel the imperfections as you walk around but they're not really visible during the day. Yesterday was the first day with water and when we turned on the led lights they are really apparent. It looks a little like a topographical map with hills and vallleys. Is it supposed to be smooth? The bottom is poolcrete and was installed about 5 weeks before the liner, which was delayed (see previous post). Is this normal, can it be repaired, or does it even matter?

[hsdancer]

It sounds as though whoever put in your poolcrete didn't get it smooth, which would account for the hills and valleys. It also sounds like your pool wasn't cleaned out before the liner was installed.

The small objects sticking up could be grains of sand, dirt or just debris blown into the pool from the wind. The installers should have left you sections of your liner from where they cut out the stairs and skimmers (for repairs later). As someone else suggested in an earlier post, try putting one grain of sand underneath an extra piece of liner, and you'll get an idea of how large a lump a grain of sand can make.

Unfortunately, someone else will have to offer suggestions. I'm not sure there's much you can do at this point. Did you have any quality standards in your contract that allow to withhold partial payment for a poor job?

I don't know what's standard. We hired someone to do the vermiculite/cement (poolocrete), but we also sanded out any ridges, vacuumed, and damp wiped the whole pool ourselves before installing the liner. We have a couple of indentations that you can see when you turn on the light, but nothing like what you described.

[mer1844]

As my pool liner was being installed last year, the installer told me not to be shocked when I turned on the light at night. He stated that the smallest imperfection in the poolcrete will be magnified greatly when the light is turned on. He was right with that statement. I also think darker colored liners make it even worse. Ours has little bumps and valleys just as you say, but I understand that to be the nature of most vinyl liner pools. Disappointed as I was, I've learned to accept it and enjoy the pool.

[markeast]

Thanks for the info!

The ridges and valleys are worse by one of the lights. It looks like they occured when they we're working on the light before they installed the liner. Seems like the builder would know to make it really smooth below the lights!

Also, as I posted earlier, our 20 x 34 Tahiti turned out to be a 16 x 32 "custom" and the only the thing the builder has said about it is that he had to reorder the liner because if he put in the original it would have wrinkles. I think that would be a really large wrinkle since the original liner would have been 680 sf and the custom they put in was 530.