Our Kauai Fixer Upper – Pool Party

When we bought the house back in December, 2016, one of the “bonuses” was that the property had a pool. In San Diego we had installed pools in each of our last two home and got a lot of use out of them. So when we saw that this house boasted a pool we were pretty excited.

Now the pool itself is not a gunnite and plaster pool as we were used to on the mainland. The pool is actually an in-ground (or in-deck in this case) vinyl pool. Which means that even though it looks like a regular pool at first glance, it is actually lined with vinyl instead of plaster. The benefit of this is that the pool is much less expensive to build here on Kauai. The downside is the liner will wear out and need to be replaced periodically.

We had the pool inspected before we bought the house by a local pool company. The inspection revealed that there was a water leak on the filter and that the controller for the filter/pump did not work so they couldn’t do any diagnostics on the salt water chlorination. They did not find any major problems with the liner other than its age.

During our purchase of the house the seller up and moved and left the pool without any supervision. The next door neighbors would come over and throw some shock into the pool periodically and add water. We would come by pretty frequently and try to maintain it but it wasn’t our property yet so technically we weren’t supposed to do anything with it. Algae was a problem and the filter would never shut off because of the bad controller. It was shockapalooza with concentrated chlorine powder for a couple of months to keep the pool from turning into a mucky mess.

Let the Repairs Begin!

Finally our escrow closed and we were able to start fixing things. The house itself was a dump – as I have already chronicled in previous blog posts, but the pool needed attention as well.

The first thing I did was to fix the leak on the filter. The outflow pipe from the filter was cross threaded into the valve housing (really?) and so there was a continuous leak when the pump was running. In addition, when I went to remove the fitting, the flexible PVC pipe came right out of the connecting fitting on its other end – badly glued. I had ordered some new tubing and fittings and was hoping that I wouldn’t have to replace the valve due to damage from the cross threaded fitting in the valve housing. Fortunately with the new fittings I was able to clean up the threads and, with the help of some pipe sealant, I was able to repair the leak.

The next thing was the controller. $400 for a new display module that runs the controller and the fix was done. I could now let the pump run on a timer instead of having to turn the breaker on and off manually. The new controller also let me know that the salt chlorine generator had passed on to the Big Pool in the Sky and that also needed to be replaced. Not cheap!!!

With the new chlorinator in place, I didn’t need to shock the pool anymore to keep the chlorine level up and I was adding less water since the leak was fixed. The previous owner had also been using chlorine tablets in a floating dispenser which is not good for a vinyl pool as it can cause the vinyl to degrade – I threw that thing in the trash. The salt level in the pool also stabilized since it was no longer leaking so much water.

This was all done between the months of December 2016 and March 2017. In March we were swimming in the pool. 😁

In April we noticed the first small hole in the liner. It was in the corner above the water line, and was barely larger than a pinhole. I got a vinyl patch kit and patched it but we could see that it wouldn’t be that long before the liner would need to be replaced. The voice of doom.

The pool was actually fine through most of summer of 2017. Some more holes started showing up in another corner of the pool and then some longer tears in the vinyl. Also, towards August the pool started losing a LOT of water. The level was dropping an inch and a half a day at least. Normal is maybe one quarter of an inch. The holes in the vinyl that we knew about were all above the water line so WTF!? We started shopping for a new liner and someone to install it.

In the meantime I got out my snorkel gear and became a leak detective. Using a syringe with red food dye I would swim around the pool and find where the dye got sucked through tiny holes in the liner. I patched 5 or 6 of the little buggers but the pool was still losing water. Then, suddenly, it stopped losing water. Weird. We think that the hotter weather had caused the plastic skimmer faceplate to warp and that the water was escaping there. When the weather cooled down a bit the leaking stopped (mostly). But the vinyl was starting to show larger and large holes in one corner and was very brittle.

I tried patching this monster hole with flex seal tape but it kept getting larger and larger

We continued our search for someone to replace the liner. There was a mom and pop vinyl pool place on Oahu that would come to Kauai and measure, order, and install a new vinyl liner. We started to get the process moving on that but, part way into it and ready to order the liner, one of the owners started to have serious health issues. So we delayed the replacement until she could recover. The pool was holding water ok, and we really liked the couple who were running the show there, so we decided to give them as much time as we could before looking elsewhere.

In the meantime, the old Hayward motor on the filter gave up the ghost and we had to replace that. The new motor was more efficient and way more quiet (to our neighbor’s delight). The liner continued to degrade but we just kept patching the corners every time new holes showed up.

Spring 2018 came and the pool folks from Oahu were still busy with medical issues. The liner was not getting any better but we weren’t losing a lot of water yet so we were content to wait.

Then the weather started warming up and we started losing water again. We began a new search for someone to replace our liner. We found a pool place in Kapaa and went over to talk to the owner. At this point we thought we might just replace the pool with a swim spa or see if we could get it resurfaced with plaster. The owner there told us they didn’t do vinyl, but also dissuaded us from changing the pool due to how expensive it would be. At least 40k to start for either alternative! The liner, on the other hand, might be 6 or 7k. They didn’t do liner replacement themselves but she knew a guy who did. She put us in touch with him and we got the process started.

But things move slow here. The first step was to make sure that the leaks were not also in the plumbing. It wouldn’t do us any good to install a brand new liner and then have leaks in the piping leading to the pool. So we let the pool sit and allowed the water level to keep dropping so we could see if it stopped when it got lower than the return lines etc. We were bummed that the pool was so low and mostly unusable. Well, again the pool stopped leaking on its own while it was still higher than the plumbing so we determined that the plumbing was OK. We filled the pool back up so we could use it and got the new liner measured and ordered. The quote for the whole job actually came in well below our initial estimate of $7,000.

Fast forward to October. The liner is here and ready for install. Here are a few pictures of the process.

As you can see the new liner is quite a bit darker. We really like how it looks.

So, the end of the pool story.

Not so fast.

Once the pool was filled, I added salt and a little chlorine to get it started. The next day I came out and the level had dropped TWO AND A HALF INCHES! This was WAY worse than before we had replaced the old liner. I called the installer and let him know what was going on. He said he would come out the next day and figure out where the leak was. In the meantime I got out my snorkel stuff and the red food dye for detecting leaks and identified some pretty significant leaks. One looked like his helper had gotten wonky with a screwdriver and poked a hole in the liner next to the steps. The other was very close to the first leak but it was leaking through the gasket where the liner connects to the steps.

So the installer comes out the next day and patches the leaks and is very apologetic. He is a good guy and very conscientious. I would hire him again. We fill the pool back up.

End of story right?

Not so fast.

We are still losing about a half inch of water a day, about double what it should lose. I do some more leak detecting but can’t find anything. However to make this very long story short, the enclosure for the light fixture had a small leak from its original installation. I used putty to seal the leak where the wire comes through and it looks like it is all good now. Pool is losing less than a quarter inch a day now.

End of story, right?

Hopefully!!!!!!!!😁😁😬

Here is the finished pool. Groovy. Another project checked off the list.