Installing Base Plates with Uprights Attached

In my last post I explained that I cannot locate replacement base plates for my 25 year old pool. Well, I'm tired of looking and have decided to just reuse the old rusty ones since dirt is going to be back filled all around the pool.

The old plates are rusted to the uprights, meaning the screws will not come out without being drilled out. Rather than take a chance on drilling them and possibly making them unusable, I have decided to attempt to install the plates attached to the uprights.

Can you think of any reasons that this would not work? Thanks



Hi. It is far more difficult to install a pool this way, but not impossible. Here is how I would do it. Since the biggest problem with installing a pool in this manner is the uprights falling down and bending the already brittle foot plates. It just takes a couple of falls and the plates become unusable. I build the pool in such a way that the uprights never fall over.

I would mark the ground where the bottom rails need to go. With a round pool this means finding a center point and taking a radius off of that.

With the ground marked you can connect a few rails and have some helpers hold the uprights up. Now start the sidewall. As the sidewall goes into the track, install a top rail. You keep going around the pool in this way. Install a bottom rail, unroll some wall and install a top rail. If you keep your bottom rails on the line you have marked the pool should stay round and the wall should be close to meeting when you reach the end.

This is a pool upright with top and bottom plates attached. Normally I would do just about anything to get the bottom connectors off. But there are those times when it is just not possible.