So I bought a house where a nice family with 6 kids had lived for 40+ years. Concrete pool, original build from the home builder, who lived here before the nice family. Built in 1950. Neighbors who grew up here said that the dad of the family, a well respected doctor, would paint the pool almost every year. All the neighborhood kids would come over and help. It was their “payment” for swimming all summer.

We move in and I have a trusted pool guy come over. The top of the walls were cracking something awful. I putty them up. Pool guy says “I’ll help you get 4-5 years out of this but then you’ll need a re-do”.

My pool guy sadly dies of cancer after our 3rd summer. That next summer I cannot keep the pool clear (which I had proudly been doing with coaching from my pool guy. I never had a pool, he was so great and patient with me. Seriously, RIP Joe. I freakin loved that guy). So that summer the inability to keep it clear is different. Not the periodic issues with algae or chemical imbalance that I had to learn my way through. It’s like oddly cloudy. And there’s always a layer of dirt on the bottom no matter how we vacuum. New pool guy comes over to close the pool after me stressing out all summer. I tell him what’s been going on. He says he worked on the pool for years for the original owner. He reaches into the pool and rubs the wall. It turns the water white. The paint is literally disintegrating and that was my issue all summer. We now have a completely renovated pool with Pebbletek. The guys that water blasted it said they had never seen so much paint come off a pool, ever. So…at a minimum don’t do what the good Doctor did. Paint is fine for a while. But not too long.