Wow, nice . We do many pool inspections ( as pool builders). Most common problems are leaking liners , cracked skimmer pipes from deck settling, old and torn safety covers . Broken heaters . Loud or weird noises from motors mean they are at the end. Lights can cost up to $1000 for a new socket.

I'm in the northeast in NJ. That's exactly what I did 25 years ago. I bought a house with an existing 16' x 32' inground, vinyl lined pool. Changed the pipes and everything. It wasn't the main selling point for me, but it was there. It was one of those "Dream" pools. Anyway, the liner has been replaced a couple of times - one by choice and another a necessity. The second time, they drained the water into inflatable pools to avoid having to refill it with a truck or my hose/well. I replaced the deck, which used to be wood but is now concrete and added new coping. New filter and safety cover last summer. So far, it's been pretty decent.

Liked the part where you talked about the neighbors and then remembered we live in the today side of that description, but ahhh the good old days. Also happy that with our current house I refused to compromise with my wife the ability to get heavy equipment around back on our property. Have an old vinyl liner pool. Had a leak already in the return linea and have just bypassed it across the deck for now. I replaced the pump and filter myself this year. Went to DE and VS pentair pump. (Oh my, nearly trashed it bc the SVRS was a pita during opening BUT it works great now and even lets me manually vac with no problem.) Thanks for the vids! I have flex pipe underground, rusted skimmer bolts, wall is probably trashed behind the leaky return fitting etc... but we knew it was likely in need of major work.

As a guy that built vinyl pools in Oklahoma and Socal and did insurance work on them for a couple insurance companies in SoCal in the 80’s I appreciate your video here. If I ever had to pull a liner to do work on the pool. We would set the line in the shade and run a garden sprinkler on it the whole time. I also would tell people to go the extra money and get 30 mil over 20 and if possible double layered corners. As this is where your liner usually get the Sun and tension damage. Once had a woman with a hole in the slope of floor of liner about 6 inches in diameter. And was going to have a big party in a couple weeks (always the case it seems) I peeled back the liner and kept it wet. Sand bottom, Ugh! . Re-troweled it She couldn’t afford a new 20x40 and it wouldn’t have been ready that soon anyway. I took a new main drain assembly. Cut the receptor ring off the drain. Took a new piece of vinyl I had from a skimmer or stairs I had cut in. Pinned it with the receptor ring on bottom and the grid ring on top. Had her up and running in two days, counting the refill. You would have thought we were fireman that saved her house, she was so thrilled.! I have even put liners in cracked gunnite pools that people were considering filling in. If you know what your doing, vinyl liner pools can be very forgiving.

All good information Steve. Enjoyed watching it. I had a few friends who had bought a house with a pool. Come spring time when they want to open it and dive right in, that’s when reality kicked in hard. Don’t buy a house with a pool in winter time when it’s snow covered thinking you will be swimming as soon as the weather gets better. I think that in Quebec, the pool condition is not gaurenteed when you buy a house with a pool. As you mention in your video, it can be very costly! Even if you don’t open your pool for a season or more, it can be very damaging especially when winter sets in. Thanks for the video!

A pool was a requirement for my current house but the last owners definitely didn’t take care of it and hadn’t opened it in two seasons. Repiped everything replaced pump, replaced sand with zeolite kept liner for two seasons but it was did have issues and I eventually replaced it. The sad thing is the neighbor told me they had the liner replaced not too long before we bought it. I thing if the original owners had not had a quality build it would have been a total loss given the neglect from the prior owners.

If you are a prospective first time pool owner,always get a pool inspection. Get it yourself,do not rely on the real estate agent to supply it.

Steve, not sure if i missed it in your video, but I did not hear you mentioning to observe when purchasing a new house to see if the pool is bonded and grounded. Not only for safety, but especially with salt to chlorine generated pools, to prevent galvanic corrosion.

Wow. This video was amazing and depressing at the same time. I have a vinyl in-ground pool with steps and would never get another one for one single reason - I can’t find anyone to work on it. If you know of anyone in the Dallas/Fort Worth, TX area that does this work, please pass their name along. After watching your video, I fear that I’m the one with the coping track problems. It just made me feel so overwhelmed in disgust of this pool.

My concrete deck looks in good condition but the coping track is starting to pull away from the concrete deck so there is a small gap between the deck and the coping. The 10 year old vinyl liner is still in great shape and doesn’t seem to have any leaks because I’m not losing any water. Do u know why the coping is pulling away? Does this mean I have to to replace the deck too?

What if the pool was not opened for the summer? I am in Ohio, U.S.A. and the house I am looking at has a picture of a cover with a lot of leaves on it. It is September- the inspector would lift the cover - right?

Really interesting. I bought a house 3 years ago with what I always thought to be a liner pool but my vinyl is way thicker than what you see nowadays. It's like 2 mm thick or so. And I don't see a coper it just sort of ends below the stones. I think it must be 10+ years old but it still in relatively good shape. Do they still install vinyl like this? Thanks for your video I'll do some checking like you suggested. Best regards.

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