Staining my pool.... on purpose!!

18 years ago

I've got a 10-year old gunite pool that has some construction issues as it was built by some pool employees as a "weekend" job. Basically, the gunite is in good shape, but has some bumpy spots and a few thinner spots also. I just can't resurface at this point, and any

paint-like product scares me as a decision that there is no turning back from, and added costs when it is resurfacing time ultimately.

The surface has a good bit of mottling and discoloration that chlorine will not remove. Currently, I have drained the pool and am planning an acid wash and some diamond-pad polishing to knock down some rough areas that cut up the kid's feet. I've experimented with the acid wash in a few areas and it makes a great difference, but doesn't remove the discolorations completely.

My question is this: is there no "concrete stain"-like product that I could apply to the gunite to give it some color (like blue). Even if the stain took differently in different areas, variations of blue would look far superior to the white/off-white/brown coloration I have now. I know that acid stains for concrete floors are always sealed, which would clearly not hold up in a pool, but surely there is something that would "stain" the gunite to help conceal the gunite "stains". It seems like a stain-like product would not add too much trouble when resurfacing is truly necessary. Any ideas / thoughts appreciated.

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Comments (3)

tresw
18 years ago
I'm not sure what may be available as far as a stain goes, but just to point you in the right direction you're actually dealing with plaster, not gunite. Gunite is what the shell is made out of, but it is coated with plaster (the white coating you see). The plaster coating is quite thin (1/4 to 1/2 inch) when it is new and slowly wears down over the years. So you may have even thinner plaster than that. Be careful with the polishing pad and acid washing as you can go right through the plaster to the gunite underneath if you hit a really thin area.
tommyw
18 years ago
You should reconsider using an epoxy paint as a stop-gap measure. It would give a nice uniform appearance and last at least 3 years. As far as added cost when the time comes for a new replaster .... you can rent a sandblaster and remove all remaining paint in no time. In fact several folks I know repaint their pool every three years as long as the plaster is in decent shape. Good Luck!
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barco
18 years ago
I doubt you will get any kind of stain to permeate with "uniformity" across such a surface with such non-uniform permability. It will probably look much worse than it does now. Then to top it off, I doubt it will stay up for the long term against the chemicals. I tried to stain between my tiles because the PB used tile cement between the tiles instead of grout...its white and ugly. The stain could not hold up to Muratic acid wash by the plasters and its not standing up to the chlorine either over the long run. I'm probably going to have to muriatic acid wash the rest of it off or just let the chlorine finish it off over time. Since the tile is a natural looking sort of brown slate look, the non-uniformity between the tile look actually still looks better than the solid white so I was able to chance it knowing it probably couldn't get worse.

Paint or replaster is the only way to go IMHO.