Finally finished painting the pool after lots of prep work after years of neglect in my rental. With Covid restrictions gone, I was finally able to move forward clear debris, prep surface (lots of hours) and paint. I used Dura Seal epoxy with an 8-year life.
I had debris and sludge built up from the tenants and some campers who trespassed and dumped in the pool, very nasty.
After cleaning the sludge, I had to pump the water out several times with my trash pump after the atmospheric rains this season.
I then washed the entire pool down with muriatic acid. After finding different waste hazard places to dump the acid. I washed the pool with TSP.
Due to the years of tenant abuse, there was still scaling. I tried sanding with an orbital sander and that barely “scratched the surface “. 😉 Then tried sandblasting and that was going to take way too much material and cost.
I finally found a BAUER 9 Amp Surface Conditioning Tool surface preparation tool from Bauer and sanded the entire pool removing that hard white scale! I took several hours through a couple of weeks after work and weekends to complete this.
I then wanted to etch with something other than acid again prior to painting and tried several chemicals like CitrisStrip but that left a residue I had to clean up with acetone and the surface prep sander again. I finally acetone etched the whole pool and did another round of sanding with the surface prep tool.
I had to wait a while after taping the pool off for painting. I did light washing with the hose pipe and not pressure wash to get surface dirt after doing some patching of cracks and areas when someone dropped a heavy object in the empty pool. I then waited an extra day and painted!
Finally, I will get a chance to get water in the pool and test out the pump. I hope they did not damage the pump or that equipment! It was working fine when they moved in!
No more amateur time, the pool will have a professional pool service maintain it and that will be written in the lease!
Pictures from start to finish as of today.
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Pumping out water process. That leaves debris to be scooped up. Some of this is what some campers from the neighborhood left.
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A little guy dropped into the pool. I had to set a long 2×4 for him to eventually crawl out.
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