We have and inground pool and this year while opening we notice the liner had water behind it Help ?

Question

What can be done to repair this ?

Answer 1

Depends on the cause of the water behind the liner. If it's simply because you have a higher than normal ground water table this year, you can do one of two things.

1/ Let the laws of gravity and displacement of fluids take over as you fill the pool from it's current level at opening ( it should be down at your returns when you took the cover off). As you fill, the water inside the pool displaces the water under the liner, outwards, away from the pool where it can leave the immediate pool area. You just need to keep an eye out for wrinkles and brush them out towards the nearest wall as you fill.

2/ Set up a pump beside the pool with the discharge pointed INTO the pool. Unhook a small section of liner from the coping track and put your pump's suction hose  down between steel wall and liner.  I usually used a short chunk of 1 1/2 inch poly pipe, long enough to reach down  2 1/2 feet or so and I also lubricated the pipe with a silicone based lube, making removal easier when done. Prime and start up your pump. This is a quick method of dealing with this issue and what a Pool Pro would do. We'd keep a keen eye out for wrinkles as the liner sits back and brush where and if needed. Once done, remove the suction hose, boil up a kettle of water and use that boiling water on the section of liner you removed from the coping and pull the liner back up into the coping track.

If a high water table is to blame for this and you expect the same thing to happen again next year, you can always install a dry well ( sometimes called a french drain) next to the pool. It just needs to be a small diameter pipe that extends to a depth of 5 feet or so, that you put 4 inches of gravel down and can drop a small, cheap submersible pump. Whenever you expect to open the pool in spring, just put the pump down there, start it up and discharge the water downhill of the pool or some place that water will leave the pool area. That'll dry the ground up and prevent your liner from floating at opening Just keep that pump going until the pool has been filled to normal operating depth



If on the other hand, that liner is floating due to a liner leak, well, you need to fix that first or it'll still be floating. You can then do either of the above things I mentioned.