Permanent repairs anyone?
It is my professional opinion that a concrete swimming pool can never be permanently repaired if it has extensive structural cracks. Time and again, have I witnessed how modern waterproofing methods fail to permanently repair concrete swimming pools of varying sizes with extensive structural cracks. Furthermore, my company's primary core competence is repairing damaged concrete swimming pools, as we have been providing this service since 1988. And we have yet to see a modern swimming pool repair method that can permanently repair a concrete swimming pool with extensive structural cracks.
Thus, I firmly believe that once a swimming pool's monolithic concrete shell gets extensively cracked, it becomes permanently damaged like a condemmed building, and any structural repair on a concrete swimming pool will only further damage its monolithic concrete shell and consequently render it structurally unstable.
Moreover, I also firmly believe that a concrete swimming pool is a monolithic load bearing structure, which resists both external loads (such as hydrostatic pressure from ground water resting outside the swimming pool concrete shell) and internal loads (such as the weight of the swimming pool water), similar to the hull of a ship.
"The hull of a ship is a load bearing structure which resists the loads from the sea and the loads from internal sources like for instance the weight of the cargo and the forces and vibrations from the main engine/propellersystem. In general, the conclusion is that all parts, large and small, of a load bearing structure have to be analysed and fabricated to withstand internal and external loads." source:http://tigris.marin.ntnu.no/byggeteknikk/start/LoadBearingStructure/
However, the differences between a ship's hull and a concrete swimming pool are that 1.) A ship's hull is not a monolithic structure while a concrete swimming pool's shell is a monolithic structure. A ship's hull consists of several plates welded together to form a single structure while a monlothic concrete swimming pool is constructed like a single stone slab. The word monolithic comes from the word monolith; 2.) A concrete swimming pool is made of concrete while a ship's hull is made of steel. While steel is malleable, concrete is brittle. Thus, steel can be bent, welded, and repaired easily, whereas concrete cannot be bent and welded, and consequently, cannot be repaired as easily.
So, an engineer faced with this swimming pool problem would, therefore, be tempted to repair the extensively cracked and damaged concrete swimming pool shell by chipping off its exsiting cracks, installing new support beams, refilling these chipped off areas with new concrete, and then waterproofing the newly repaired areas. Yet these temporary repairs would, in turn, make that swimming pool's concrete structure into a non- monolithic concrete structure and a structurally unstable swimming pool, regardless of what methods used to repair it.In my opinion, it would, therefore, be a better and cheaper option for a swimming pool owner to construct a new concrete swimming pool within his/her existing cracked and damaged swimming pool rather than temporarily repair the cracked and damaged swimming pool and suffer repeated repairs in the long run.
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