Liner Shrinking and Starting to Collapse

by B
(Mulberry, Indiana)

Hi, We purchased out house over the winter and the previous owners didn't do a very good job of winterizing the pool. We have an above ground approx. 24 x 12 oval pool.

It was a complete swamp when we tried to open it this year. We finally decided that we needed to drain it and scrub it clean if we would ever have a chance at a nice clean pool. I spent 5+ hours on Thursday scrubbing the pool and it looked beautiful.

Saturday morning we had water delivered to fill the pool. We only got 1.5-2 ft of water in the pool, when the liner started collapsing, pulling in from under the rail. We immediately stopped filling the pool. It is very tight- doesn't seem like we have a chance of stretching it. Is there any way to attach another piece of liner along the seam to make the liner larger and fit back under the rail? Or is our only option to drain it again and get a new liner?

It seems like the whole liner is made from multiple pieces of liner attached together. That makes me feel like we should be able to attach another piece of the liner to the edge to make it large enough to fill with water. We have had nothing but problems so far with owning a pool and we are very close to scrapping the whole thing. :(

Hi B

My guess is you are looking at a new liner. If the liner is over a couple of years old it is not a good idea to drain it dry, they will shrink and not stretch back out. A lot of sunlight on a hot day helps, but if the liner is over a few years old that still won't help.

So if you were not filling it on a hot day in full sunlight you could try that. If the liner is an overlap liner you may have liner pulled over the side that you can reset.

I have never seen anyone add liner at the top. It does not sound possible to me. I recently had a site visitor glue the liner to the wall and he said that worked fine. I'm not sure for how long that would hold, but might be worth a try.