Installing New Liner Over Old One

by Cindy
(WV)

A fella I work with advised that when his pool liner went bad he cut the 'beaded' part off the top of the liner and taped the old liner to the pool wall. He then installed the new liner over the old one.

He felt this would give added protection to the new liner. Do you recommend this?




Hi Cindy. In theory this makes good sense. But in reality it does not usually work so well.

When a liner is drained it usually shrinks and wrinkles. This causes the bottom to be rough. The other problem is most pool bases need smoothing during a liner change. If the pool base is perfect, and the old liner flat and smooth, this might work just fine.

A sand base will always need to be smoothed out again. I remove the old liner and then run a large push broom over the entire pool base. I do this until it is perfectly smooth and then reinstall the new liner.

There are some pool bases that do not need to be smoothed out at liner change time. Many types of foam basis are like this, they just stay smooth. But then these bases would not need the extra protection of a used pool liner.

So, I would be very careful with this advise. Do not install a new liner over a wrinkly, lumpy existing liner. If it is perfectly smooth and perfectly flat I'm sure there is nothing wrong with it, but I seldom see them that way.