POOL REFURBISHMENT
It’s a fact of life that after a while your pool will lose the pristine new quality it had when it was first purchased. It will suffer from wear and tear and need some tender love and care to bring it back to its former glory. Whatever the circumstances, here’s what to do to put some zip back into your pool experience
T
he time will eventually come when you need to give your pool a facelift, or at least a bit of cosmetic surgery.
Perhaps you inherited a pool when you moved house which now needs some attention and tender love and care, so what can you do? If you find your pool is losing a lot of water
(more than 12mm per week), you might have a leak that needs addressing. It’s essential to work with a professional company to identify the source of any leak, if possible by checking for any crack in the pool lining or in the pipe work taking water, to and from the pool. SPATA (the Swimming Pool and Allied Trades Association) can provide information on tracing water loss through a series of simple tests which a pool owner can carry out before calling in a pool engineer. If a fault is located in the underground pipe work, equipment is available to ensure that any disturbance to your surrounding property is kept to an absolute minimum.
LINER POOLS
The life expectancy of a pre-formed PVC pool liner can be anywhere from seven to 12 years although this can be longer with careful control of the level of chemicals in the pool and by keeping the water temperature below 29°C (85°F). Over the life of the liner, it may lose some elasticity or suffer from wrinkling, cracking or minor cuts and punctures. The latter can be temporarily repaired using special waterproof adhesive patches or permanently by welding. When the time comes to replace the liner completely, care should be taken that the floor screed and walls are still in good condition and any problems rectified before the new liner is fitted.
40 WHAT POOL & HOT TUB
CONCRETE POOLS Again, before starting any work, check that the pool structure is sound and watertight. If the shell is sound, the pool can be refurbished by retiling to create a new effect, or simply making the pool look more modern. Should any leakage or hair-line cracking be apparent, this may indicate continued structural movement which would suggest that the use of a brittle finish such as tile or mosaic may not be appropriate. In this case, it is possible to employ a glass fibre reinforced finish which is not only hard and resistant to impact damage, but also has sufficient flexibility to absorb minor movement.
LIGHTING
Advances in new technologies offer a variety of alternatives to the traditional pool light. A lot of existing pool owners are now finding they can dramatically and quite cheaply change the look and mood of their pool with new lighting.
SWIMMING AGAINST THE TIDE Rather than renovating a pool, you may want to add a new feature to an existing pool. The technology is at hand to provide the experience of long distance swimming in a pool no bigger than 8’x6’! These small swimming pools / swim spas have a counter-current unit providing resistance to the swimmer. The resistance is provided by a high volume pump producing a turbulent flow of water from outlets along one side of the pool. Swimming against the current offers all the benefits of a full exercise swim within a small area.
PRECIOUS WATER When refurbishing a pool, all owners need to minimise the water loss from their pool and many
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