From Gunite to Vinyl...

[aatwatch]

Hello all,

Thank you for the site as it has helped me greatly the past three years. We just sold our current home to get a larger home for the kiddos and are moving from a gunite pool to a vinyl liner pool. What are the major differences in terms of maintenance or things I need to be prepared for that I did or didn't have to worry about with my former pool?

Thanks!
Jason

[aylad]

Welcome to the forum!!

I've never owned a gunite pool, but I do have a vinyl IG...to me, seems that it would be much easier to keep up. Aside from obvious things like not letting the liner get ripped, there's not a whole lot of difference--calcium levels are not as important, and you have to be a little more careful about chlorine levels going way beyond the recommended levels per your CYA (see the "best guess chart" in my sig), but other than that, I can't think of any real differences, at least from a water quality point of view...

Janet

[CarlD]

Just remember not to use a wire brush on it...or ever let it get empty. An empty gunite pool can "float" out of the ground, but not if there's no ground water. If you let a vinyl pool go dry the odds are you'll have replace the liner.

About every 5 years or so hard-sided pools seem to need serious maintenance, like re-surfacing or painting. A well-maintained vinyl pool can go 10-20 years without replacement, though at 10 you may need to think about a liner.

Carl