Cracked, outdated or leaking: reading what has failed
American Pool & Spa opens its rehab page with a question worth answering honestly: "Is your pool in need of a face lift or simply installed with issues?" Those are two different problems. Age wears a pool out slowly and shows up everywhere at once. A poor install shows up early, in the same spot, and keeps coming back.
On a vinyl liner pool the tell is the liner itself: a faded pattern, wrinkles along the walls or floor, a seam that no longer lies flat, a waterline that keeps dropping. On a gunite pool it is the plaster, with rough patches underfoot, spider cracks and stains that no amount of brushing moves. On any shell, tile and coping that have gone loose at the waterline are a small repair today and water behind the wall later.
A leak is its own category. Water loss that outruns evaporation can come from the liner, a fitting, the plumbing or the shell, and the fix depends on which. The source gets found before anyone quotes a repair, so you are not paying to replace a part that was never the problem.
How a rehab runs, from liner swap to gunite replaster
Their rehab list covers vinyl liner and membrane replacement, fiberglass resurfacing and gunite replastering. The same page adds tile and coping updates, shape redesigns, stairs and tanning ledge additions and lighting upgrades, so a tired pool can come back as a different pool instead of the same one in fresh paint.
A liner job starts with an empty pool and a hard look at what is under the old liner: the walls, the floor, the track, anything that would telegraph through new vinyl. The liner is made to the pool's measurements, which is why fit decides everything. A liner that is a little off wrinkles, and a wrinkle is a stress point you will see every summer. Gunite and fiberglass follow the same logic: the old surface is cleaned back to something sound before a new finish goes on, because a new coat only lasts as long as what it sticks to.
Reshaping is where a rehab turns into a design job. Adding steps, a tanning ledge or a corner of lighting means deciding on a plan first, in feet, the way this builder names every pool it sells. The office at 265 N Keeneland Dr in Richmond is open Monday to Friday, 10am to 5pm, to talk those dimensions through.
Equipment modernization: pumps, filters and heaters
Their rehab page lists complete equipment modernization: pumps, filters and heaters. Pentair is among the brands American Pool & Spa shows on its site. When the pool is already drained and the plumbing is exposed, it makes sense to ask which of that equipment you would otherwise be replacing next season.
Older single-speed pumps run flat out every hour they are on, which is loud and hard on the filter. Newer variable-speed pumps can run slower for most of the day. Heaters and filters age on their own schedule, and a rehab quote that names the equipment on the pad lets you decide what stays and what goes with the numbers in front of you.
After the refill, bring a water sample to the Richmond office. A freshly finished pool needs its balance set carefully, and the water testing desk prints the results and marks the bottles so the first weeks are straightforward.
