Face Lifts for Aging Pools : Fix-Up Business Is Booming for Older Southland Pools

Does the bottom of your swimming pool feel pitted and rough, scratching the feet of unwary swimmers?

Does keeping your pool full mean running the water day and night?

Has your pool plaster suddenly turned a bizarre new color?

If so, join the crowd of Southern California pool owners with problems ranging from built-up scale that snags skin and swimming suits, leaky pipes that can cause inches of pool water to disappear daily, to disintegrating copper pipes that turn plaster walls blue when pool chemistry gets out of whack.

With almost 500,000 Southland swimming pools at least 10 years old and starting to show signs of age or neglect, you’ve got plenty of company if your pool has troubles.

As the Southland’s pool population has aged, the pool fix-up business has boomed, taking up the slack from a slow new construction market. Many contractors who once built new pools now concentrate on making aging pools look new again.

Pasadena homeowner Willard Hanks had plenty of clues that his 28-year-old pool was due for major maintenance. The paint that a previous owner had applied over flaking plaster had softened and oxidized to the point where he could spot his footprints in the pool’s bottom. His service technician warned Hanks that the pool’s surface would need repair “sooner or later.”

But Hanks also knew that the bill for replastering was a minimum $3,000--more than he wanted to sink into a pool he rarely used. Hanks adopted a wait-and-see approach. When he returned from a vacation last fall, he could hardly believe his eyes. The sides of his swimming pool looked as though someone had splashed them with dark blue paint.

The bluing of a pool’s surface, Hanks has since learned, is a phenomenon that can occur to pools plumbed with copper pipes. When the pool’s pH balance drops too far below neutral, the water reacts with the copper in the pipes creating a deep blue color on the plaster.

Hanks stares at the new look of his pool, wondering which repair avenue to take now that “sooner” is here.

Whether motivated by blotchy plaster and leaking plumbing or merely bored with an out-of-date look, a pool owner has a wide choice of solutions to his problems: acid washing (a wash with muriatic acid); painting (painting over plaster); repairing or replacing worn-out piping; replastering (scratching or removing the old plaster and adding a new layer); refurbishing (new tile, coping and plaster); remodeling (creating a new pool in the old shell), and even removal.

Pool owners whose plaster problems include no more than a buildup of scale or chemical staining can usually get by with an acid wash in which the pool water is drained and the empty shell scoured with a muriatic acid solution. The procedure should remove most surface stains and mineral deposits that snag bathing suits and skin.

The price for acid washing is reasonable--as swimming pool maintenance prices go--between $170 and $400.

Since the acid wash may remove as much as one-third of the pool’s plaster, it’s wise to chose an experienced contractor to do the job. Too high a concentration of acid may shorten the life of the remaining plaster finish.

In the ‘50s and ‘60s, paint was a common decorative cover-up for damaged pool surfaces. These days fewer pool owners paint, since it’s strictly a do-it-yourself option.

Contractors ordinarily won’t paint pools because customers aren’t satisfied with the outcome. “A paint job doesn’t last long enough to justify the expense,” said Bill Barrett, owner of Aqua Pool Supply of Pasadena. “People who do it are getting ready to sell their homes and want the pool to look better. But they’re not doing the next owner any favor.”

However, the cost is minimal--paint and supplies run about $200. The paint must be applied to a dry pool surface and a second coat added 24 hours later. Ten to 14 days of drying are necessary before refilling.

A swimming pool leak used to be a pool owner’s worst nightmare. Entire sections of tile or decking might have to be removed with no assurance that the leak would be located in the targeted area. Chewing up the deck, coping or tile looking for the source was an inefficient way to track down leaks. But for years the relatively low cost of water encouraged many homeowners to tolerate a problem leak.

Professional leak detection began in the 1970s as plumbers started using sophisticated sound detection equipment to track down home plumbing system leaks. The swimming pool industry soon adapted the technology. Two leak-finding companies currently operate in Southern California, American Leak Detection and National Leak Detection.

Chris Graham of American Leak Detection begins by plugging up the lines in a swimming pool. If the system won’t hold pressure, he knows there’s a leak. Copper pipe leaks can be tracked so accurately that Graham needs to cut only a 12-inch square hole in the deck for repair. PVC pipe, which replaced copper in the late 1960s, gives a leak detector slightly more trouble.

One pool owner had already torn up and replaced 700 square feet of concrete deck looking for a leak before calling American Leak Detection. “With scuba gear, I found his problem in 10 minutes,” Graham said. “It was caused by a plaster gap under a return pipe. Total cost to find and fix it--$250.”

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With higher-priced water and front-page stories of houses sliding down hills due to leaks, pool owners would be wise to respond more quickly to a leak than to mere cosmetic problems.

The longer-term solution to many unsightly swimming pools is replastering. Common white plaster, a mixture of white cement and white marble dust, has been the standard material to finish swimming pools since they began appearing in middle-class back yards in the 1950s.

And because filtered water against white plaster looks bright blue, most pool owners don’t choose to have color added to the plaster finish coat in a remodel. Yet color-mixed plaster can add an interesting darker hue to a pool--as Willard Hanks accidentally discovered when his plaster became stained. Nearby towering eucalyptus trees appear more dramatic reflected against a darker pool surface.

But Hanks hasn’t decided whether to use colored plaster when he finally decides to repair his “blue” pool. He knows that mixing color in plaster is hazardous. Too much heat in the materials may cause mottling and a little extra atmospheric moisture contributes to streaking.

“You lose the sparkling reflection of the water with darker plaster” says Robert Wolcott of Aqua Artists, pool builders and remodelers of Montrose. “But in special situations, colored plaster sets a mood.”

When clients decide to replaster with color, most contractors require a signed release against color differential. They want to be protected from disappointed clients whose finished plaster rarely duplicates the color pool owners think they have chosen.

Substitutes for plaster in swimming pools have been developed in recent years. Inter-Glas, a fiberglass material marketed by American Chem-Tech, is applied over a roughed-up plaster pool in three coats. The plastic-like coating is resistant to the staining that can attack a plastered surface.

The manufacturer advertises Inter-Glas as a long-term solution to the problems that beset the traditional plaster pool. However, Inter-Glas has its own problem. If the application of the material isn’t perfect, the Inter-Glas material can eventually delaminate, or peel away from the sides of the pool.

Long-time pool builder Anthony Inc. offers another replaster alternative with “Anthoshield,” a new chemical compound with features of both plaster and Fiberglas. After surface preparation, the Anthony product is sprayed on at high pressure. “Anthoshield” is new to the Southern California market and doesn’t have a long-term record, but the company offers a lifetime warranty on materials and workmanship.

Resurfacing an average-sized pool with either product costs slightly more than replastering. Hicks would pay $3,800 for the Anthoshield technology, and $3,600 for Inter-Glas. Two replastering bids averaged $3,000.

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When a homeowner decides to change more than just the interior surface of his pool, costs rise dramatically and design choices increase exponentially.

Refurbishing the pool, which is akin to redecorating a house, replaces elements like tile and coping, without changes to the pool structure itself.

Larry Doan recently looked over the 30-year-old pool in the back yard of his San Marino home. “It might as well be new,” he said, admiring the effect achieved when Arcadia Pools replaced “everything”--plaster, tile, coping, plumbing, decking, even landscaping.

Before its transformation, the Doan pool was like many aging Southern California pools, badly needing replastering and plumbing repair. The new landscaping and decking were optional, but gave the refurbished pool an elegant new setting.

Remodeling, creating a new pool within the old, is an option for the homeowner willing to make a sizable investment in his home and pool. Often assisted by landscape architects, pool remodelers are able to create unusual rocky environments and to integrate the pool more naturally into the back yard space.

San Fernando Valley pool contractor Stan Meyers enjoys the challenge of complete remodels. Most of his clients are motivated by the desire for a “new look” for their swimming pools rather than by the necessity for repair.

He often raises pool bottoms because “no one dives into pools anymore” and they are easier to heat and maintain when they aren’t so deep.

Fashions in pool design are subject to the same periodic changes that affect home decor. Features from pools of the 1960s and ‘70s, such as diving boards, swim rails and rounded coping, are now “out.” Large rocks, natural or manufactured, that form the edging of the pool, colored plaster, cantilevered coping, spas within or close to the pool, as well as exercise “lap” pools are “in.”

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Depending on the complexity of the job, pool refurbishing can run between $7,000 to $20,000, while pool remodeling might begin at $15,000 and go up dramatically depending on features chosen. The option most often chosen in remodeling is a built-in spa, said pool designer and builder Don Ward of Reflections Pools.

While a spa itself can be constructed within an existing pool for a reasonable $7,000, the replastering, tile and new coping work that is often done at the same time, expands the cost to $15,000 or more. Most contractors say that their clients rarely add a spa without refurbishing the entire pool.

Pool owners who haven’t dealt with contractors recently may suffer “sticker shock” after getting their first quotes for needed pool renovation.

Except for acid washing, modest repair work, such as replastering, is as expensive as building a pool was 20 years ago. Remodeling an existing pool may cost the same as building a new pool from scratch.

Real estate agents and pool contractors agree you should plan to stay in your home at least five years before investing in extensive pool refurbishing or remodeling. In today’s housing market, the cost could be difficult to recoup in a resale.

But if your pool doesn’t leak and the equipment is functioning, there remains the “do nothing” option. All that’s necessary is the ability to live with a pool that obviously needs work, equivalent to not painting a house when the old paint has begun disintegrating. The house won’t fall down, nor will the pool cease to operate.

But as with all maintenance operations (the pool industry regards replastering as routine maintenance), the longer you postpone needed repairs, the more difficult the corrective work becomes.

Ann Cooper of Arcadia, tired of maintenance costs for her unused pool, finally drained it. When rain occasionally collects in the bottom, she sprays for mosquitoes, later pumping out the water for lawn irrigation.

“Using the pool as a rain barrel makes good sense to me as long as nobody wants to swim,” she said. Cooper’s unconventional approach is best exercised when the pool is located out of sight of the house.

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A more final solution to pool problems is talked about but seldom exercised. Few pool owners, no matter how tired they get of maintenance costs and problems, go so far as to have a pool taken out.

When Wolcott, of Aqua Artists, gets queries about pool removal, he advises the homeowner to first consult a real estate agent to get an idea of the pool’s value. As pool construction costs are about $30,000, he hates to see a pool destroyed if it can be avoided.

Not that pool removal is a cheap alternative. Most city building codes mandate that the pool site be returned to its pre-built condition. That means you don’t just order truckloads of fill dirt and dump them in the pool. Drain holes must be drilled in the shell’s bottom, and the steel structural supports have to be partially removed.

One contractor informally quoted a price of $10,000 to take out Hanks’ Pasadena pool and prepare the site for a garden. That was enough to persuade him that he needs a replaster job more than a new rose garden.

Whatever work a homeowner decides to do getting his pool in condition for summer swimming, experts agree that choosing the right contractor is vital.

“Check references,” advises Larry Golnick of Riverside Cement, manufacturer of the white cement used in most pool plastering jobs. “Good contractors have a track record of satisfied customers and stand behind their work.”