1 out of 5
While losing water from my pool I discovered several small leaks in my Trevi pool liner. I drained the pool and put 1 inch hawser ropes from a strong tree at shallow end for easy access to deep end of pool.
On 2011-10-22 I phoned Vinyl Connection to get an estimate to repair leaks. (I already had one estimate for $200.)
Two Vinyl Connection servicemen came. For some unknown reason they detached about 15 feet of my vinyl liner at deep end and went under it to look upwards for leaks.
I did not like this process, as it could be stressful on an 11 year old liner in cool fall weather, but went along with it as the technicians were supposed to be experienced professionals.
(The normal way of locating leaks is by visual inspection or with scuba-diving gear and sonic leak detectors which does not disturb the liner.)
My grandson finds plastic liner leaks by visual inspection and patches from water side as usual. He tells me afterwards he would have repaired my liner for nothing.
At 75 my eyes are simply no longer good enough for such visual inspection.
In process of detaching the liner (Lord know why?) the 2 Vinyl Connection servicemen pried and broke off about 15 feet of the bead track (Lord knows why again?).
They then drove off and returned with a tube of construction adhesive and applied lumps of that thickly to spots along the broken off bead track.
I was very dubious about that Rube Goldberg kind of repair but they assured me their glue was very strong. I noticed the thick adhesive made the bead track overhang the ledge it normally sits fully on so it would now tilt inwards, thus becoming very unstable.
They let the adhesive dry overnight (with no clamping) and told me to go ahead and refill the pool while they left a strong shop vac running with hose through a small gap while I did this. It took me about a day to fill pool by running my 2 garden hoses.
I phoned them when done and they returned to get equipment and present me with a $621.50 bill which was hugely more than I expected (I already had a $200 estimate) but I paid the bill on the spot.
I watched the pool level for 2 days and the liner was still in place, so I covered the pool over for winter in the usual manner.
I seldom use the pool but my grand-daughter wishes to have her birthday party next week here using the pool so I started opening it this July 25.
That is normally a very simple job for me, just top up, vacuum winter debris to waste, add usual chemicals, shock and it is ready to use on time for my grand-daughter's birthday.
Needless to say, I was extremely disappointed to find the Rube Goldberg construction adhesive repair of the bead track had failed and both it and liner had fallen away from wall, preventing my completion of pool opening.
(The Trevi factory has since written to tell me the bead tracks are welded in place with a Ultrasonic welding system to each pool wall panel section and there is no glue compliant with these 2 thermoplastic materials, that is w