I've looked at this thread several times, but have stayed away because I really have to focus on other things. But, this sort of problem is the kind of thing I love to work on, plus I would like to help anybody serving over there. (My first cousin was Petraus's chief of strategic plans a couple of years ago; his son was wounded there, my brother-in-law with the Corps of E spent 6 months at Camp Victory doing EOD design & supervision; a close friend is a chaplain in Kabul and was there during the recent attack, etc. . . . and my 15 year old is planning to be a Marine officer. So . . .)

Anyhow there are several things you probably can do to improve the quality of info you've got:

1. Take pictures and sent them to me -- I'll work out a way to post them here. (send to poolforum AT gmail.com)
- skimmers, main drain
- pool inlets
- piping in pump area
- pool surface details
- pool over all
2. Find out what sort of treatment chemicals are available to you, and at what price. That will determine the 'best' way for you.
3. If you are in a sand area, you can probably use indigenous sand to site-build a vacuum sand filter, with block, concrete waterproofing, and sand -- if that would be cheap for you.
4. Find out what sort of electricity you have (volts, cycles, available amps, hours per day) and the effective cost to you.
5. Describe weather conditions during your building period - you can't do epoxy when it's too hot or too cold.
6. Check all piping inlet and outlets, in the pool and at the pump, and enumerate them, including inside diameter SIZE and piping MATERIAL.
7. Verify that you have piping available that you can connect to what's existing.
8. What is the cost and availability of fill water? It's possible to fill from a sewage canal, but you have to plan for it. Water cost determines how important it is to avoid leaks.
9. Pressure test the piping, and check flow rates to verify usability BEFORE you start work on pool.
10. Identify any code limitations you face.

I know this is a lot of information, but you need it to do it right in the first place. And, it's much much better to find this stuff out now, rather than later. For example, if your effective cost of cyanuric acid (stabilizer) is $50/lb, because it has to be air shipped from the US . . . you need to know that NOW. It could be a disaster to put in a salt system (because salt and electricity were not too expensive) only to discover that it was unusable because leakage required to use more water, salt and $50/lb CYA than you could afford.

PoolDoc

PS. The good epoxy paint is about $80/gallon delivered in the US. A 2 coat finish requires primer at about 100sft /gallon and finish at 140sft / gallon, plus about 1 gallon of solvent ($20) per 5-10 gallons of paint. I'd be happy to see if Kelley Tech might donate the paint, or sell direct. Painting tools are a loss at the end of each painting session -- cleaning epoxied rollers is not practical BUT you need high quality roller covers. Power mixing is ESSENTIAL. You cannot paint when it's rainy, very hot, cold, or windy (ie, dusty). Epoxy is NOT forgiving; you MUST do it right.