Now What? Sand/pool?
Question:In order to level the ground underneath a new above ground pool, I had sand brought in & leveled it off. I placed landscap-ing bricks at low end to retain the sand. Now I learn that the mfgr. DOES NOT recommend using sand underneath, because of its instability. Do you have any recomendations? I do not want to go thru removing the sand. The pool is a 12' dia. I have thought of placing plywood on top of sand, but that really doesn't seem right either. I certainly don't want to make concrete using the sand either. Help please. The sand on low end is about 8" deep & approx. 2" deep on shallow end.
Answers:
Professional installers use play sand, you're fine. The one thing that I might add is that if you used those bricks as a sort of retaining wall, is to have laid down a layer of filter cloth before you added the sand next to the bricks. Just a 1 foot wide section of cloth, laid on the bare ground and up the interior wall of the brick, all the way around the perimeter. Place the remaining sand on top, trim the cloth to the top edge of the bricks and level out the sand.The filter cloth will stop sand from migrating through gaps in the bricks, keeping it in place. It'll never move out from under the pool. As it stands now, that may happen to you eventually under the bricks and where they abutt.. You can find the cloth at any landscape shop dealing with interlocking stone. It's porous to allow water through but nothing else.
The manufacturer doesn't recommend using sand because they don't want people putting the pool on a bed of sand 12" thick, having it slide, and then getting sued because someone was too foolish to use common sense.
You are perfectly fine with what you have. The weight of the water will hold the sand in place well and you have done a very good job of containing it so that it won't slide anywhere. My suggestion would be to redo this a little next year when you set the pool up... try to level underneath the deeper end so that you can maintain a sand bed no more than 4" thick all the way across. This will guarantee no slipping and shifting of the sand.
Though if you don't have any problems this year, then don't fix it next year ;-D
I've had an above ground pool for over 20 years and have had sand underneath the liner. Works very good.
What does the manufacturer recommend ?
I definitely would not put plywood on top of the sand.
More Related Questions & Answers...