What to do?
Our Village’s first two re-plastering bids for the outdoor pool were pretty high at being around $60,000. It was somewhat interesting that Berry Pools was using LIV as a reference last spring saying they were picked to do this re-plastering. When our Village finally received a third bid at $30,846, everyone got skeptical. It never crossed my mind to just patch the bottom one more time as Director Peterson had proposed. He received a bid of only $3500. It struck me as a grand idea and a means for our Village to get by for the next several years?
This bottom sitting for over six years and with the history of inconsistent water chemistry, one would think that most of the defective bottom has occurred. South Texas Pools, who originally did the work, gave our Director the same after warranty patchwork price of $3500 that they quoted almost three years ago to our GM, but now will be doing a much bigger patchwork job. It appears they felt a little committed after doing such a poor job. The only concerned I heard told by the Board of why we want to redo the pool bottom was to keep people from cutting their feet.
One might ask do we need to make this pool bottom perfect to correct this problem.
Currently our Village has an unknown amount owed for lawyer fees due to numerous pending litigations. A few of these lawsuits make us now pay tens of thousands of dollars more a year to provide a high risk insurance coverage for our swing bridge. If it's available at all, these insurance premiums will continue to quickly rise. Our problemed economy has cause large increases in our Village’s COGS, utilities, and employee wages. We are to pay more for a dearly needed licensed security. We have thrown thousands away for a silly sidewalk to nowhere and the relocation of one fire hydrant. Our Village is paying through the nose for a constant overbilling of our trash pickup to which our management appears unable or unwilling to correct.
Is it smart for us to now spend ten to twenty times more money to make the pool bottom look perfect for a year or so?
Wouldn’t just fixing the bottom areas of the pool at this time be far wiser? Think about it, for $3500, our Village could patch our outdoor pool for eight years in a row and the total cost would still be thousands less than the lowest re-plastering bid. Most pool professionals will tell you the life expectancy for re-plastering is from 4-8 years. This new plaster will be considerably more susceptible to stains and damage caused from poor water chemistry than our current diamond bright pool bottom.
For years our management has known and has not corrected the circulation problem which stabilizes the outdoor pool’s water chemistry. Now who’s to say if we did re-plaster our pool today that in a few years we wouldn’t be in the same or different mess as today. Does our pool bottom have to look perfect?
By using a small amount of the thousands saved with area bottom repairs, we could correct the outdoor pool circulation problem and finally, for the first time, meet the minimum Texas State code requirements for water filtration turnover. Our outdoor pool bottom may not have to be perfect but our pool water should be.
Should we think hard about just doing only these pool bottom area repairs, pool lights, along with correcting our circulation problem and save over tens of thousands of dollars, or instead, re-plaster our outdoor pool bottom and take our chances?

From David Cooke Pool Plaster Co. LLC
PLASTER IS LONG LASTING: The secret to long life of any pool surface is properly maintained water balance. Improper water balance will destroy any pool surface and in many cases, void the warranty of that surface.

From Ultraguard Inc
Pool contractors today have no compassion for their customers. They know, what is being offered for pool interior restorations are a perpetual chronic application. UltraGuard has been the best kept secret in the pool industry because plastering and painting pools have always been a high volume, high profit business, with a life expectancy of only 2-6 years with no real warranties

PLASTER & PAINT
Plastering- Renewing the interior surface of a pool to a beautiful smooth finish & then applying a number of coats of either, Epoxy of Chlorinated Rubber Paint , has been the choice of thousands of pool owners. The system is very efficient but does not last as long. The repaint will need to be done each 4-5 years. Paint can be used to give some brilliant effects in pools using many different colors.