The saga of cracked pool.

[Amir]

this started about 2 years ago when we purchased a new home with a pool (20x40 33K gal). As we all know it was hot real estate market then. We liked the house and saw the pool was marked asis so we asked why and were told that a few tiles were missing. We purchased the house without inspection with a bidding war about $60K over asking price. Later after settlement we found out that the pool had popped out of the ground but settled unleveled and a large (1600 sq ft) deck has been poured level with the unleveled pool. There were cracks circling the shallow end of the pool all around, the pool beam was cracked etc. Lets not get into the details of the fight with the previous owner which is still ongoing. I got 6 people to come in to give me estimate of repair. 3 said you need to tear it down and build a new pool. 3 said it can be repaired. of the 3 one will not give any warranty and one did not give an estimate and said he is too busy! The third gave me a two year warranty and said the cracks are not too serious. That the one I used. At the end of 2005 season they tear down the beam and cut all the cracks, fixed the beam and put hydraulic cement in the cracks new tile and coping and replastered at the beginning of the next season. Upon filling the pool the cracks appeared again in the new plaster. After going back and forth with the contractor whom I knew underestimated the severity of the cracks I researched and found Torque lock http://www.torque-lock.com/ and made a deal with the contractor (I felt sorry for the guy - I have a small business and can sympathize with him) that I will pay for the staples (about $2000) as long as he will install them and he is still on the hook for the two year warranty! They installed the staples end of last season and I suggested to him to check under the pool for cavity. He drilled holes in several areas and found cavities under the shallow end which he pumped cement and sand in to fill and plasered the entire pool again. We filled the pool up yesterday and NO Cracks! Lesson learned! A little overdoing and over engineering is a good insurance for trouble later. I don't know if it was the Torque Lock or the filling the cavity that fixed the problem but the combination did the job.
regards

Amir

[tenax]

wow, amir...good job! sounds like you really had it figured out..not pool related, but settling and cracking related. in our area, the ground can settle tremendously under houses. i first noticed that one side of my double garage was down about 4 inches overall..there was a long crack in the garage floor when we bought the house in fall 2007. i knew where it needed to start was a process called slabjacking here. not dissimilar i think to what you are talking about in terms of force a concrete type mix into underground cavities. the first guy i had come in who is a big contractor slabjacking large buildings said i could do it, but he said to be honest, the jobs he was doing were 50,000 dollars up and he didn't really do small jobs. he said he could do but it would cost me 6,000 dollars to which i gulped..but, he said i know a guy just out of town who's a one man operation who does all the small jobs and he would call him. the guy came in, the job was 400 dollars to drill 6 small holes and pump with concrete. it raised my floor and surrounding sidewalk to level and i did some work myself to finish raising the garage itself with a jack pole so the garage floor could come up. in the end, a pretty small job, but, one not to be ignored for the long term repercussions. i tip my hat to you.

ps- if it makes you feel better, the big slabjack contractor guy said he knew of one house in this area of the city that are all build on the side of what we call a coulee, basically a small hill going into the valley that runs along a river..and he said that you had to see it to believe the settling and how quickly.over the winter and after spring thaw, the floor in this person's living room dropped so much that the floor cracked all the way across and there was a difference of 6 inches from one side to the other. he said to fix it all and forever, it was going to cost the homeowner 150,000 dollars on a 400,000 dollar house. he has one crew permanently stationed in this area to do fixes and has more business than he can handle. part of his business now has become offering a package to "settle proof" homes in this area at a cost of 50,000 dollars going in. it's unfortunate, but apparently the house contractors just don't know how to do this themselves.

[Amir]

The mudjacking is not "rocket science". They do it here also. I did get an estimate from a company for about $1400 to do the same thing. Our concern was not to raise the pool but just fill the void. Since the pool contractor had the equipment to pump the plaster we did not need to hire another contractor. The other problem with my pool was that there is an underground stream under our property. when we were working on the pool to make dual drains they made a large hole in the bottom of the deep end. The ground watter filled the pool with in a month!

The settlement in new homes should be covered by the builder. The foundation should be built on solid ground and they should dig deep enough to reach that. I am surprised that people are not going after the builder. You need not pay "extra" for the house to be built right!!
Regards

Amir