What is the useful life of tiles pools versus gunite?

[smallpooldad]

What is the useful life of tiles pools versus gunite?

If it is properly maintained, and what are the pros and cons apart from expense?

Any help would be appreciated.

[chazas]

I built a pool a few years ago in Honolulu so I have some experience with this.

We chose gunite and plaster, despite everyone's recommendation to go with tile. When house-shopping, every tile pool we saw had a bunch of missing tiles. That didn't seem to be a good sign.

We did have tile in our spa, which our contractor insisted on. They had to redo it completely once - it was so bad. The other problem is that there is very poor access to tile in Honolulu. Our contractor "forgot" to hold the tile we selected and when it came time to do the spa and the waterline there were literally only 2 choices in stock on the entire island of Oahu. My partner basically cried at the Daltile office - and they released us some tile they were holding for someone else.

In the end, our plaster job on the pool itself wasn't the best - but we never had it corrected because we were in a dispute with our pool contractor about some other things, and he hadn't paid the plaster sub. We just lived with it. And we were definitely happier with it than we would have been with tile that was falling off.

I loved having a pool in Hawaii, but getting it built was a complete nightmare. Just prepare yourself. The main problem is that the pool industry in Honolulu is that it's just too small.

Good luck.

[smallpooldad]

Thank you for your reply.

It seems the only way to keep persons honest here is to a) have them bonded and b) hire a cement engineer to spec, oversee the quality of materials (test the cement content prior to installation) and the supervise the installation of those material.

I think the missing tile issue is due to many minor earthquakes here on the islands and a great deal of land settling. I agree with you gunite is the way to go.

Sad but true.

Aloha

[mbar]

What about a fiberglass pool?

[chazas]

Personally, I think the tile issue is from bad installation. On Oahu earthquakes aren't nearly so common as on, say, the Big Island.

No fiberglass installers in Hawaii, as far as I know. Just think of the cost to ship one of those suckers! This is the same reason you can't get things like precast coping in Hawaii - it's just no worth it to put it on a boat to go that far.

[sahara]

I live in Honolulu and was just going to ask a similar question so thank you for this thread. I have a pool that either needs replastering or tiling. Everyone says to tile as it will last longer. Do you have any other pros or cons? How was the cost factor between the two? I have read this board and hear about "tiles falling off" - are there warrenties?

Also on another subject - any comments on type oif decking? Right now my pool is one big concrete slab around it - would like to change that as well.