Hi all,

I bought a house in 1999 which has a fiberglass in-ground pool. I believe it is one of those pools where they dig a hole and then drop the fiberglass pool mold. Anyway, about a year ago we had some flooding, the back yard was mostly underwater for a few days. About a week after the yard dried, I noticed that some bulging was appearing along the walls of the pool in the deepest part. Stupid me, not knowing anything about pools, decided to drain the pool up to where the bulging was occuring (to see if I could determine the cause). So, I am in the pool inspecting the walls when I hear some cracking noise (like an egg cracking), I look at the bottom of the pool; where the floor meets the wall, and I see a crack begin to appear. In no time the crack grows from a few inches to about a foot or more. Dirt immediately starts to sip into the pool.

I have called just about every pool builder in Houston, and no one appears do do any fiberglass repair, or even deal with fiberglass pools. So I don't know what to do..

I was dragging my feet on this, because frankly, it was depressing just trying to figure out what I needed to do to fix my pool. Now, I am being forced to relocate out of state and need to sell my house. My house is fully paid for, but I obviously can't sell it with a broken pool. I want to see if anyone knows what I can do to solve my problem. Right now, I believe I only have two choices, remove the pool an fill the hole, or replace the pool. With this in mind I have the following questions.

1. If I decide to remove the pool, fill up the hole and plant grass; do i have to contact anybody to let them know the house no longer has a pool?

2. How much would it cost me to get rid of the pool all together.

3. If I want to replace the pool, would it be cheaper to just build a concrete pool which would assume the exact dimensions of the existing fiberglass pool, as opposed to building a new pool from scratch?

4. How could I repair my existing pool? I was told by a friend, that since the dirt around the pool caved in, simply fixing the crack will not solve the problem. He said I have to fix the ground around the pool before fixing the crack.

Thanks for your time. Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated!!