Patching Light Hole In Sidewall

by Rheal Girouard
(Ottawa,Ontario, Canada)

I'm replacing my AG pool liner, I have a light in the wall.
I want to fix the hole where the light was and not use the light anymore.
What would you recommend to fix the hole??
Thank you, Ray



Hi Ray. Patching a hole up high on the wall like where your light should be located is pretty simple. You would just need a piece of metal about the thickness of a cookie sheet. In fact, I have used cooking trays to make wall patches out of. They are fairly easy to cut with time snips. Hardware stores sell flat stock metal that would also work just fine.

Cut the metal to be about three to four inches larger than the hole all the way around. This patch can be duct taped to the inside of the wall.

Occasionally in my early years of pool building the tape would let the patch fall into the pool before the liner filled and held it tight against the wall. I learned that if you fun a couple pieces of tape up and over the top of the wall, this never happens.

Doughboy pools have been using this method of closing off unused openings for skimmers and returns for over forty years with no problems. They even include pieces of actual wall material pre-cut into squares for this purpose. The nice thing about these were that they matched the color of the wall. I would save any of these that were not used to use for situations just like yours. We could use them to block off light openings or to block off a rusted return opining so that we could cut a new one in a better section of wall.