I'm seeking advice and knowledge on how to repair our pool. It is a concrete bottom, fiberglass wall pool built around 1980. We had a very small crack in the fiberglass panel that had been patched over and over and over with the epoxy stick stuff. This was done every year by a local pool company.
Last year, when the pool was opened in the spring, the skimmer would no longer create suction, and a leak was found by another local pool repair company. This is where the nightmare began. He told us we needed a new skimmer and new line installed. His guys dug a new trench outside the pool concrete deck area, all the way around to the pool equipment. When the concrete section surrounding the old skimmer box was removed, the workers pushed in the fiberglass wall about 1/2" on one side of the crack. They said they would dig it out and push it back and repair the crack.
4 weeks later, unannounced, the contractor came back while I was at work, installed the new skimmer box, and only caulked the crack with some polyurethane type caulking. When I called him, it took 2 weeks to call me back, and he said that was all he could do.
Shown in the pictures below, the crack stayed leak proof for just last season, and this spring (2 weeks ago), when I removed the cover, I found that the fiberglass wall had been pushed in even further, and the caulking had popped open. See pictures below.
I'm a concrete contractor for 32 years, and had my serious doubts about this repair, so I never (luckily) poured the new walkway around the skimmer, but only placed in paver blocks to have something to walk on for the summer. It was a wise choice, as it turns out.
What is the proper way of repairing this type of crack in a fiberglass panel? We are trying to assess if we can make this pool good again, or if I need to say goodbye and cave it in. Will a typical fiberglass matting/sheet buildup repair work for this?
Thank you for your assistance, and reading this far.