Swimming Pool Liners Install - We Did It

I just put a new pool liner in my pool and we are very happy with it. So I thought I would go ahead and put up a hub, and let other people know about this. We have always enjoyed our pool, but with the new liner and it is a lot more comfortable (no skinned knees), it looks new, and I stopped worrying about leaks.

Swimming pools can be a pain in the butt in terms of maintenance, and all they do is take up space in the winter, but in the summer they are a blast. We added to the enjoyment we were getting of our pool by using a designer swimming pool liner. I’ll talk a little bit later but the way this looks, and also I let you see what some of the top liners on the market go for.

One of the things I love about the liner is how it completely changed the pool's appearance. Before we put in the new liner, our swimming pool looked kind of old and worn down, but now it actually looks brand-new. (except for the cracks in the concrete around the pool)

Most of the liners out there nowadays are vinyl, and you can get them for either inground or aboveground pools and in most any shape. There are manufactured to withstand UV radiation and to last for years.

To be honest, I was a little daunted by this project. Our swimming pool is 14’ x 28', and I knew that this would require several people. The first thing we did was pull out the old liner. We drained the pool and then cut around the liner tracks. We did screw one up -- and I had to replace that, so be careful here. The next thing we did is very carefully and completely clean all of the old tracks. My goal here was to put them in like new condition.

After that, we scrubbed the pool. That was about as much fun as you might think it was. Our pool had been sitting for several months and it was a funky with a capital F. After we scrubbed it down and rinsed it out, we went over it with a fine tooth comb to make sure that we didn't have any cracks or funny places where the concrete was sticking out. We also double-checked all the goes-in-tos and goes-out-ofs to make sure that there were no sharp points that might damage our new liner.

Once the pool had been fully inspected, and it was completely dry, we vacuumed it. I wanted to make sure that there was not going to be the tiniest bit of debris left in the swimming pool to damage the liner.

After all that was done, we pulled the new liner out of the box and unrolled it. Then we lined up the liner with the pool corners. The instructions said that we should always start at the deep end, so that is what we did.

Once we had it in place, and the corners were fairly well matched up to the corners of the swimming pool, we pulled the edges of the liner up and started attaching it to the track. All we did at this point was just kind of tack it up here and there. Once we had it pretty much where we figured it belonged, we moved on to the most painstaking part of the project.

We rented a special vacuum for this from our local pool supply house. What do with this thing is kind of suck the liner into the pool walls. You have to go pretty slow and you'll find that you’re constantly haning to stop and fiddle with the liner position. Maybe there is a really quick professional way to do this, but we couldn't figure it out. We spent a lot of time smoothing out ridges and pressing bubbles out from between the liner in the side of the swimming pool. This is probably the least enjoyable part of the whole process.

Time to get wet

Once I was satisfied that the liner was completely smooth, and that I didn't have any gaps between the liner in the inside of the pool anywhere that I could see, we went ahead and put water in the pool. Then I cracked open a cold one, and waited for the inevitable disaster. Unlike most of my projects, nothing went wrong this time. We went ahead and put the trim pieces back over the liner track and we were done.

In retrospect, I have to say that was not nearly as much trouble as I thought that it would be. Our new pool liner looks great. We selected the design that looks like ceramic tiles. It's actually a pretty good simulation, you can't tell that it's just a liner into you get right up on top of it.

If your pool is looking a little tired, or you just want to spruce it up, you may want to take a look at this. It is not the cheapest project, but the bang for the buck is there. The only down side is that once you are done, all your buddies want to hang out and swim while they drink your beer.