Above Ground Pool Wall Dented and Buckled

by Sandy
(Massachusetts, USA)

After a nasty winter here on the east coast, a section of our above ground pool wall dented or buckled. Can this be fixed?

The liner isn't ripped so we're hoping we can fix it without taking out the liner. What caused this? Could it be a defective pool wall? The pool was installed June of 2006.

We haven't had any problems until now but we did have a very bad winter. Any help you can give us will be greatly appreciated. Thank You

Hi Sandy

This is just an educated guess but I'm thinking the ground froze and expanded a little. When a bottom rail is pushed up it causes the wall to buckle. This is usually very easy to fix, without draining the pool or changing the liner.

If the ground thawing does not allow the rail to go back down on it's own you will need to take care of it yourself. Using a screw driver, you can carefully loosen up, and pull out a little dirt from under the rail. When this is done it may take a few taps on the bottom rail to get it to lower back down, but when it does the wall should straighten out on it's own.