Pool Crack Repair in Flower Mound, TX

Pool cracks: in the finish or in the shell

Shrinkage cracks in the finish

Not every crack reaches the structure. The National Plasterers Council keeps the name shrinkage crack for one that opens during application or within 24 hours of the finish's final set; a crack through the structural shell is another matter. Universal White Cement, a white cement maker, reads circular or spider cracks gathered around a single patch as a sign of plaster coming loose rather than of a broken shell, and that work is covered under pool plaster repair.

Structural cracks in the shell

Shotcrete is only a way of placing concrete, the American Shotcrete Association points out, so any method that repairs cracks in concrete applies to a shotcrete pool shell. Its guidance sorts cracks by cause. Small holes missed during shooting, and certain shrinkage, autogenous or plastic cracks, can often just be plugged or patched. Cracks from structural movement, or from stress built up inside the structure, call for a deeper investigation that settles both the cause and the remedy before any repair is chosen.

Rust stains and thin cover over the steel

Rust bleeding through plaster can start in the shell. Where it comes from steel shot with too little concrete over it, the Association puts the responsibility for proper cover on the shotcrete contractor, and says a section shot with reduced cover is far less durable than its designer intended. An article in the Association's magazine gives the mechanism: with too little cover, water reaches the reinforcing steel and starts corrosion that can spall the concrete off.

Flower Mound Pool Resurfacing will talk through which kind of crack your pool has before a repair is chosen.

Flower Mound clay soils and pool cracks

Soil maps show much of Flower Mound on ground that moves. USDA soil data clipped to the town's boundary rate the main soil Very limited for homes, with shrink-swell as a full-weight reason, on 9,059.14 of its 26,697.51 non-water acres, about 33.9 percent. Navo clay loam, which covers more of the town than any soil but one, and Wilson clay loam both reach a linear extensibility of 7.5 percent, a measure the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service reads as more potential for soil movement the higher it goes; Heiden clay reaches 12.2 percent and Branyon clay 13.0. On the 1980 Denton County soil survey's scale, a change of more than 6 percent is high shrink-swell and more than 9 percent very high.

That survey also describes the force involved. Some Denton County clays, rich in the clay mineral montmorillonite, swell as they get wet and shrink and crack as they dry, pushing hard enough to crack foundations and walls that aren't specially reinforced, and sometimes ones that are. Not all of the town is clay: Gasil fine sandy loam, rated Not limited for homes, has a linear extensibility of only 1.8 percent. The survey writes about foundations, walls and roads rather than pools, and the nearest pool engineering advice is Houston's, so each crack's cause is still checked on its own.

In The Colony, the soil survey maps that same Branyon soil as the main soil on about 61.2 percent of the mapped land, and our page on pool crack repair in The Colony covers that city.

Flower Mound's amended pool code requires a permit application to the code official, and the permits it calls for, before anyone repairs or alters a pool. The 2021 edition of the model International Swimming Pool and Spa Code lets minor repairs be made in the same manner and arrangement as the existing pool, where they are approved and not hazardous. Ask the Town's Building Inspections before a crack is cut open.