Found a soft spot behind my liner, fixed it for way less than I thought

Started by Jason Okafor · · 2 replies
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#1
Doing a liner swap on the shallow end wall last month and noticed the wall foam behind the old liner was mushy in one spot, maybe a foot square, right where a return fitting had been weeping for who knows how long. Braced for a bigger job but it was just that one panel of backer board gone soft. Pulled it, dried everything out for a day, cut a new piece from a sheet of the same wall foam and glued it in with liner adhesive, ran me under $20 total. Pool store quoted me a full wall panel kit for way more before I even got a number on labor. Checked the return gasket while I was in there too, generic kit instead of the OEM one, holding fine so far. Your mileage may vary depending on how far the rot spread but worth checking before you assume the worst.

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#2
Honestly the part about the return fitting weeping for who knows how long is the real lesson here, that slow drip is way easier to miss than a liner tear since there's no water loss you'd notice day to day. I don't have a liner pool so no wall foam to worry about, but on my spool I make it a point to feel around every return and the skimmer body with the cover off each spring just for that reason, cheap insurance compared to what you just described.
#3
Fiberglass here so no wall foam to rot but that slow weeping return thing is universal, I had a return jet on mine that was barely damp to the touch and it took a full season before I noticed a stain trail on the pebble finish below it. Now I do the same feel-around Derek's talking about every spring, costs nothing and beats finding out the hard way like Jason did.