Introduction
Inground pools can be expensive to run and even more expensive to repair when things go wrong. Our pool is 40ft x 20ft and contains around 40,000 gallons of water. It costs us around $1,000 a year in chemicals to keep it clear, clean, and safe.
In 2010, when I opened it in the spring I found that one side of the pool had collapsed. It cost us about $7,000 for a team from Sparkle Pools to come out to the house, excavate all the soil, repair the side, put in a new liner, and refill it.
In 2025, when I opened it, we found about 10"s of the liner had pulled away from the coping on the side of the pool.
Liner pulling out of the coping - Spring 2025
What we decided to do was open the pool despite the risk of the liner pulling out of the coping completely and ask Sparkle to come out and look at it to see what could be done.
What they usually do in situations like this is heat up the liner a little and pull it back into place. In our case they couldn't do that as the liner was 15 years old and too brittle to heat up and stretch. So we asked them to get us a new liner and while they were doing that we would like steps in the shallow end as some of our friends are older and could no longer manage the ladder to get into and out of the pool. They said they would be back in the spring and the total amount for the work was $15,000.
Waiting
We used the pool all of the 2025 season without mishap and in May 2026, I took the cover back off the pool. As I thought they would be there fairly early in the season, I opened the pool a couple of weeks early, in early May, and did not add any chemicals to the pool when I did.
Despite several phone calls to them, Sparkle did not turn up until July 13, by which time the pool looked like a swamp.
Waiting on Sparkle - a very frustrating time
Building the Steps
Sparkle arrived on July 13, and the first thing they had to do was pump out the pool so they could make the steps. We have nowhere for the water to go except for the back alley, so that was where they pumped it all.
The New Liner
On July 27, once the concrete for the steps had set, the guys were back and pumped out most of the remaining water in the pool. They cut a big section of the pool liner at the bottom of the deep end out and let the remaining filthy water drain into the sand.
The sand was then relevelled and the new liner fitted and then filled with water. They used four tanker loads!
The new liner fitted and the pool filled - July 27, 2026
We were disappointed with Sparkle for taking so long to start work on the pool, but once they got going the guys worked hard and soon had the work done.
Finishing Off
The next day, on July 28, I added a PoolRX canister to the pump prefilter, chlorine tablets to the chlorinator and started the pump. I poured 4 gallons of shock, and 2 quarts each of algaecide and stain and scale remover to the pool. After tht I put the diving board back into place.
The days after that, on July 29, I swept the coping around the pool and vacuumed out the sand and gravel that had fallen into the pool while they were working.
