A good question might be why they did not send you the right liner??
I have some experience with that sort of thing as I worked building
swimming pools for 3 summers while I was in university. By then we had
pretty much moved away from using sand and instead used what we called
pool pad. It was a mixture of vermiculite and cement. Initially we used
a lot of cement so it looked like concrete but that ultimately moved to
a drier mixture. We would pack it in in the right shape and then drop
the liner in quickly and fill with water to hold things in place. Quite
a process as these pools had deep ends and some were kidney shaped and
at least 40 feet long. If the liner dislodged material when we were
shifting it into place, someone would have to go in under it and do a
quick patch. Sometimes we would have underground water that would not
stop seeping and would have to get the liner in very quickly to prevent
a lot of water under the liner.
Randy
On 18/10/2013 11:03 AM, WILTON wrote:
Yep, 'nother Sondy Tale already.
THE SWIMMING POOL
By Wilton Strickland
At Sondrestrom Air Base, we were proud to have the only swimming pool
(indoors and heated, of course) in Greenland. I don't remember the
exact dimensions, but probably about 20 feet by 40 feet by 4 to 5
feet. Not long after I arrived, the Danish maintenance contractor
chief engineer came to me on day with bad news about the pool's
plastic liner - it was leaking and had been patched so many times that
it was beyond repair. We called a manufacturer in the States and
ordered one of the right dimensions and had it shipped to McGuire AFB,
NJ, for delivery to us via Air Force C-141 cargo aircraft a few weeks
later.
The Danish workmen immediately set about removing the old liner and
installing the new one. Installation of the new liner involved
sucking air with a vacuum cleaner from between the outside of the
liner and the pool's supporting walls as the liner was filled with
water. The support structure corners between the bottom and side
walls and at the ends of the pool were square (sharp, 90° angles), and
the old liner fitted into them nicely, but as the new liner filled
with water, it became obvious that the corners of the new liner would
rupture before going into the corners. We had to stop the filling
process, empty the liner of water and devise a way to get the liner
into the corners or support the liner appropriately in these areas. A
call to the manufacturer confirmed that the liner could not have -
could not assume - square corners. We finally decided to fill in the
square corners in the support structure with wet sand rounded into a
contour (a cove) that the new liner could more easily assume. The
bottom was already sand; we just extended the sand in a rounded
contour up the side for several inches and in the end corners to
relieve the excessive tension on the liner in these areas. Because
water in the base system was at only 56°F, we also started heating it
while filling the liner to help improve the liner's stretchability.
We also positioned several more suction hoses around the outside of
the liner to reduce air pockets as the liner filled with water. The
second filling went very well, and we had no more problems with the
pool while I was there. 'Never did use it myself, though.
I noticed recently in the current Kangerlussuaq hotel and tourism ads,
they enthusiastically promote the heated indoor pool. 'Glad they're
still enjoying it. The liner has probably been replaced once or twice
or more since we did it in '78, and it's likely that nobody there has
any idea about the hassle we had with seemingly such a simple task
that could have been catastrophic had we just blindly let the liner
fill without proper attention to those corners.
Wilton
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