Help, Drained Inground Vinyl Liner...is It Ruined?

[GaPoolOwner]

We opened the pool on Thursday and found out that we had a leak in the pool cover this year and the water was horrible. My husband said he was going to drain some of the water to be able to clean it better, but he got a bit overzealous and drained pretty much all of it!!!! Oh and we also had a place where the liner had come undone from the coping, about 1-2 feet long. So he fixed that and tried to fix the wrinkles that had formed at the bottom of the shallow end as well.

I searched online and found that draining an inground liner is a HUGE mistake....but alas it's already done.

He tried to refill it, but it's been raining for 3 days and so as you can imagine it's a mess and I just don't know if we'll be able to recover. But we definitely do not have the thousands for a new liner install right now.

Any advice? The local pool installers won't call us back, and we left a message for them on Thursday and Friday about the wrinkles and the liner coming loose....we haven't called them yet about the new issues as it's the weekend.

We have a 3 year old liner that was replaced when we bought the house, it's in a concrete pool but well below the other yards surrounding us....so lots of water from the rain is causing some of this havoc.

Help please

[LinerMFGr]

Ga,

The big issue with draining any pool is the possibility of walls collapsing (vinyl) or the pool popping out of the ground (FG and Gunite). Since this didn't happen you are not entirely up the creek.

As long as your liner hasn't torn away from the fittings (step gasket, return lines, main drain etc.) the liner is salvageable. You need to find an experienced liner installer. He will likely drain most of the water from the pool, put a heavy duty industrial vacuum or even a shop-vac behind the liner so it all sucks into place. He'll make sure the liner is wrinkle free then start filling the pool up with water.

Please note--you should not try this yourself. Have a professional do it.

Good Luck.

[GaPoolOwner]

Can you give a general estimate for refitting the lining like you described? I appreciate your help....my husband is GREAT at everything, and works hard to keep the house/yard in beautiful condition and this has just really gotten him down....he feels defeated by the pool. I'll try a few more pool places in the area tomorrow and see if we can't schedule someone after the rain stops.

Is it okay to leave the water we have in it now? It's really muddy since the rain moved in....but it should be okay for a week before mosq. move in, plus the water is keeping the liner from shrinking...etc I think?

Thank you again....your information was very welcome and I hope you're right that we haven't ruined it.

[USMC_Wifey_1345]

Not sure if this matters, but would it be cheaper to remove the vinyl lining and just stick with the concrete??? If not, in this economy, installers may be willing to allow payment plans OR have drastically cut prices as it is a luxury. What state are you located?

[jkusmier]

At 3 years, the liner might be salvageable. I agree w/ Liner MFGr - have a professional work the problem. Don't worry about the water, mosquitos, etc. for now - just keep the pool filled.

I don't know how large your pool is, but replacement liners for 16x32 - 18x36 traditionally run $700-1000, plus installation costs. Active searches and calls on your part will probably result in some savings. If replacement is necessary, call friends w/ pools. You might know someone who's done it themselves. It's really not rocket science, just a simple procedure if you know what you're doing. I personally know 3 people who have installed their own liners w/o incident, and they look fine. Last resort, locate a pro who does liner installs and explain you'll supply the labor and pay cash if he'll direct the work. All contractors love cash and most will accommodate such requests. If so, have your husband watch them install a liner on another pool and take notes. Just make sure the help shows up, in numbers and on time. Mistakes happen, tell your husband not to fret. Hopefully the liner is salvageable.

[Pool-newb]

I don't know if you'll appreciate this or not but I purchased my house with pool and the pool was an algae, green fungus dead turtle swampy filled mess. All the professionals I talked to said it would be possible to recover the water and I did. Today it looks great, is balanced and sanitized and I'm happy with it.

I probably could have replaced the water but I think I enjoyed the challenge.

Over the past winter I drained the water to below the jets to make sure they couldn't freeze and slapped a cheap cover on it. The water below stayed fairly clean but the cover was filled with ugly, muddy, pollen filled rain water. Being too lazy to dig out the cover pump and with the amount of water on the cover being about the amount I needed to refill the pool, I just pulled the winter cover off and let the crap go in.

Once again, no problem and I'm happy with the results. Of course I had to filter and backwash a lot - and pick out the worms and leaves and branches and other junk - but if your husband loves tinkering around the house, he'd enjoy doing that too.

So worry about saving the liner and pump in rainwater, mud, or whatever you can get. It won't be simple but almost any bad water can be rescued, IMHO.

P.S. Where in GA are you?

[GaPoolOwner]

Okay...this morning the company who installed the pool called back and told us it sounded like we had a mess....well yeah!

We're in Northwest Georgia by the way....where all the flooding rains have went on for the past 3 days LOL so of course that hasn't helped with our ground water levels.

Our pool is an 18 x 36 and when they replaced the liner 3 years ago when we bought the place, there was no liner in it....well there was but it was torn in tons of places and the liner and the cover had sunk to the bottom and all the water was pretty much gone. It was filled with snakes and frogs....it was so bad. They came out and patched the concrete in the bottom of the pool, installed the liner and got it up and running again but I remember it was a few thousand dollars, I'll have to look through our paperwork and see what the guy paid at closing to them. I just found it....it was 2800.00 for a new liner, change basket, service pump and replace/change sand. So pretty decent I guess?

As far as just sticking with the concrete....I don't think that would work? It doesn't look like pool concrete, is there such a thing? It just looks like the concrete around the pool.

Thank you again for everyone's response....I pray this won't go down in history as one of our more costly mistakes. My husband is just sick about it....I say in the grand scheme of things it's just a bump in the road but again...he feels defeated.

[ed3553]

First off as people have said keep the water in the pool. The cause of most problems is draining the water out. If your pool is filled back up and holding water, then the reality of it is your fine. This is providing your pool walls have not started to collapse from the water being drained.

The wrinkles you talked about are just cosmetic, if you can live with them they will not hurt a thing. As far as the liner coming out of the track, you stated your husband put it back in. Providing he locked it in properly (Prior to filling the pool back up) you should be good. In the event it comes back out in the same area, very carfully heat that area of the liner with a hair dryer, stretch it up into place and lock it in the track.

Again I want to stress to you not to panic wrinkles are cosmetic. Hope this helps.

[GaPoolOwner]

The liner has not come unattached from the fittings...etc but it is floating in the shallow end (way too much water right now in the ground surrounding the pool). I'm hoping that the pool people get here in the next day or so, they said they'd call or swing by.

And I think he attached the liner back right underneat the coping. The pool supply place gave him a piece of trim? and he bought a little plastic tool to hammer it back on....it's staying so far.

[LinerMFGr]

GA,

It sounds like you are well on your way to having a great recreation area again. It seems that others on the site answered your question: no, don't drain the water. You need the water in place to keep the walls of the pool from collapsing and maintain hydrostatic pressure to keep the ground water at bay (as much as possible anyway).

I really have no idea how much resetting a liner would cost, sorry.

I'm glad I could be helpful. Remember me when you need a new liner!

Sincerely,

Jeff Kayden

[LinerMFGr]

The wrinkles you talked about are just cosmetic, if you can live with them they will not hurt a thing. As far as the liner coming out of the track, you stated your husband put it back in. Providing he locked it in properly (Prior to filling the pool back up) you should be good. In the event it comes back out in the same area, very carfully heat that area of the liner with a hair dryer, stretch it up into place and lock it in the track.

A couple other tips I've heard from guys in the field for setting the liner back in the track:

1) use hot water to loosen up the liner and make it more pliable

2) use duct tape and fashion a make-shift handle to give you something to hold onto in order to pull it up and into place.

I know I'm straying from the point but you never know who will stumble across this thread.

[stevenz1g]

As long as your liner isnt rediculously old, it's definately still salvagable aslong as you dont get a service tech out there that tries to convince you otherwise for commission dollars. If your husband has decent knowledge of any modern tools and what not, vac'ing a liner back in place isn't as bad as people make it out to be, but if you want to make sure that it's done w/ some reassurance, call the professionals.

If you do decide to take this upon yourself, make sure to try and do the following : DEFINATELY on a warm day. Dont let the liner sit in the hot sun too long ( weeks ) as it will become hard and brittle, but use the heat to your advantage as the heat will loosen the liner thus making it easier for you to get wrinkles out, etc.

For wrinkles, get in and kinda work the wrinkles from inside, out. It will take time and dont get in too much of a fuss if you have some wrinkles left over, as the weight of the water will do plenty enough to squeeze them out -- unless they're rediculously large... and you'll be able to tell.

Duct tape around the shop vac/ heavy duty vac where you insert and just imagine creating a giant... vacuum behind the liner and if any air is coming in, seal it up.

If it's stretched beyond the returns - its time for a new liner.

Other than that, do some searches on the internet. It's a fun project!

[GaPoolOwner]

Okay....well we had one service technician out and he said it would probably be around 6-8 hours to reset the liner and that was at 100.00 an hour While at the time I thought "NO WAY" after trying it ourselves I think that we've got more of a problem for some reason?

We watched a few pool liner installations online (you can find anything online it seems LOL) and it seemed simple enough. We hooked up 2 big shop vacs at each end, drained all the water and checked the bottom for leaks...etc. The problems went like this though:

1)There was still a lot of water underneath the liner at the very bottom of the pool and we couldn't get the shop vac down that far. The sides were good and tight but the bottom was like a water bed. We did find one leak, which was two small pinholes and we patched it with an underwater patch. The hydrostatic thing was capped off by the guys who built the pool, who are also the ones who installed the last liner.

2)Once we managed to pull back the liner enough to get our pump down in there, we got most of the water out and began to refill it with the shop vacs still running. Sadly as the water filled in, the liner lifted right back up from the deep end......and has water behind it again.

3)It's almost 2am and we're just not in the mood for this.....so we're going to continue to refill it so it doesn't shrink the liner and we'll call the pro's out again to do the job I suppose....but it looks like all the pro's in our area are way too busy to deal with our pool right now....so we'll just have to wait and hope the liner stays in a condition where it can be re-used.

Thanks to everyone for your advice.....not sure why this became such a difficult task....I guess it's one of those things that's easier said then actually done LOL

***Edited to add*** Do not try to reset your liner at 2am LOL You will be too tired to make sense. This morning we woke up (left shop vacs running and hoses running as well) and by 5am or so most of the water had worked itself up the liner to the shallow end shop vac. We are still leaving the shop vacs on, and we've gotten all the water from behind the liner (or atleast the shop vacs are empty now) praying it doesn't come back. The pool has a few more hours to fill up, so crossing everything that it works out!!!