staples – Piscinaliner.com

Cracked swimming pool repair & renovation, Barranco Blanco, Coin, Alhaurin, Malaga

This is one of the worst pools that we have seen for the number of cracks in the pool structure. The pool was first built 40 years ago and has a long history of bodged repairs, one on top of the other.

The underlying cause of the pool leak was a poorly built structure. The pool was built next to a retaining wall on unstable ground. Added to this, the pool was built from blocks and not from reinforced concrete.

The pool had cracked everywhere. In the photos you can see that someone attempted to seal the cracks with silicone. On inspection, we found the problems to be much deeper. Once we knocked some of the tiles off, we found that the cracks in the swimming pool were full of roots!

A misconception that we hear often is that “the pool can’t be leaking, it’s just been grouted”. Pool grout is not waterproof.

Some of the previous pool repairs here were, painting it to stop the leak. Covering the areas of the cracks with mesh and painting again. Pouring a concrete slab inside the pool to try and hold it together. Rendering with waterproof cement. Finally tiling the pool. non of these repairs stopped the pool leaking and clearly have cost the client a small fortune over the years.

With the installation of the Renolit AlkorPlan 3000 Persia Blue reinforced pool membrane, leaks are a distant memory. The installation of the liner took approx 23 hours, including the modification and replacement of the accessories in the pool, such as the skimmer and jets. The decision was taken to eliminate the drain, as there was no practical way of installing a new pipe from pool to pump room. A new pipe would have been necessary, as the original is iron, which is not compatible with PVC fittings and can also cause brown marks in the pool (regardless whether it is a liner or tiled).

If a pool structure has cracked, the only guaranteed solution is the installation of a liner. There are other methods that can be used, such as staples or epoxy injection. These methods have many drawbacks. In order to staple the pool wall, it needs the tiles breaking away and once these are replaced, a repair will be visible. The repair is only as strong as the surrounding material. In the case of this pool, it would not have worked. Epoxy injection is sometimes effective, but only on well made reinforced concrete, with a block structure it would be useless as there is nothing for the epoxy to bind to. With both epoxy and staples, if the structure is moving slightly, all that will happen is that the structure fails at the next weakest point and the whole repair process has to be started again.