Holding the American Pool and Spa Professional’s certificate of CBP (Certified Building Professional) means that Patrick’s Pools will build you a pool according to standards set by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Building to these standards ensures a superior product with lasting quality.

Often we are called upon to perform extensive renovations. Renovations can be simple aesthetic changes, grand additions, intense repairs, or any combination of changes made to the pool.

Interested in using our gunite pool repair and renovation service? Gunite pool and spa renovations

Below is a “before” photo of a Southampton gunite pool that is undergoing a small renovation and a large structural repair.

This photo below depicts the crack we discovered that ran the  forty foot length of the pool. The beam of the pool, which is the section at the top of the pool wall that expands to a larger width to accept the coping, has actually cracked directly off from the rest of the pool shell. This is a common issue amongst gunite pools when they are not built up to the standard.

Since the entire beam had separated from the rest of the pool shell the correct way to repair this issue is to remove all concrete above the crack and create a new beam.

After removing the top section of the gunite pool (the beam) we come across the alarming fact that this pool was built with walls that are only 4″ thick. I was told by the homeowner that the pool was only 10 years old. Because the pool and entire patio look much older, I confirmed for myself the age of the pool by checking when the house was built and 10 years is accurate. This was alarming because the pool had essentially fallen apart within 10 years of its construction. An entire 40′ section of beam had cracked off of this pool shell, all of the coping had come lose from the beam, most of the tiles had cracked or fallen off of the pool, and both skimmers had cracked away from the pool shell. After considering what had happened to this pool in its first 10 years of existence, taking into account that the pool walls are half as thick as they should be, and the cost of this pool repair alone, I advised the homeowner that it would be more cost effective to demolish this pool and build a new gunite pool. His decision was to go ahead with the repair. The cost of this beam replacement along with new tile, new coping, and new skimmers was $30,000. We decided to skip the planned new marbledust finish since there will very likely be more structural repairs needed in the future since the remaining 3 walls are already showing signs that the beam will fully snap off there as well.

This is a form we created to construct the new beam. Instead of placing a 10″ beam on top of a 4″ wall, we excavated behind the pool wall down to a depth of 30″. What this does is make the entire top section of the wall 10″ thick down below the freeze line.

Here we added a rebar cage, prepared the existing concrete and created a new concrete wall for the pool. The new pool coping has been installed on top of our new pool wall.

Here we have added our new pool tile and made a 1/2″ cut into the existing marbledust so that we may add a new marbledust patch to our new wall we have created.

Here we have created a new marbledust patch over our new pool wall.

This is the final product after the repair has been finished. Please keep in mind that this pool still has its original 10-year old marbledust finish so this was not a full renovation. This was a structural repair with a marbeldust patch.

By Patricks Pools

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