Swimming Pool Disaster With Jeff Schulte

Pool Inspector/contractor extraordinaire Jeff Schulte is this episodes guest, Jeff shares his experience with a recently built built pool by an unknown pool contractor that has completely failed. This below ground pool has multiple major cracks in it and the pool cannot be repaired. This pool will need to be completely removed and then rebuilt from scratch. Listen to find out the potential cost to remove and replace a pool.

Listen to Jeff Schulte previous podcast with links below.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/buying-a-home-dont-panic-with-john-laforme/id1584253933?i=1000552660765
Youtube version of Jeff Schulte Pool Podcast
https://youtu.be/YjWedeB56yk

Transcript

John Laforme: 0:00

Buying a home? Don't panic. Just listen to the rest of this podcast Jeff Sheltie is back. And the one and only pool contractor, pool inspector extraordinaire.

Jeff Schulte: 0:21

Some of the above. Yeah.

John Laforme: 0:22

And I gotta tell you this really crazy story. There was this podcast that was supposed to happen like about 10 days ago, and the podcaster forgot about the podcastee coming over, which was you coming to my house, so I apologize for that. I was actually sitting at my table, drinking coffee in the morning, just relaxing. Actually had the day off. And I see this guy walking in my driveway, and it's you. I'm like, What the hell is Jeff doing here? I open the door. He goes. And I said, What are you doing here? Sorry about that. I stuff happens. Yeah, I forgot to put that in my calendar. And cuz it was like, I think we scheduled like two weeks out. And I just forgot got distracted. So hey, you are today. Thanks for coming back. And I got your gift.

Jeff Schulte: 1:12

You got me a brand new mug. It's my color. It's black. It's big lot of volume in it. And it's got my favorite picture on the front. That's me. And he's pointing at the cup. Let me know what he's Yes. Yeah,

John Laforme: 1:26

everybody needs coffee. That's what I'm trying to tell people. We all need cars,

Jeff Schulte: 1:30

Jackie Gleason used to say, Oh, that's so good.

John Laforme: 1:35

I love Jackie. Especially in the bandit that there was some good stuff. So anyway, you told me a few weeks back maybe longer. Now it's probably longer than that. About this pool. That was a complete disaster that you went to go inspect. Now, is that something that you just got hired to do? How did that happen? Well,

Jeff Schulte: 1:59

in addition to inspecting pools for properties that people are buying, I also do inspections for the contractor state license board here in California. Oh, and I was doing a training inspection with a new guy. Actually, he's not new, but

John Laforme: 2:17

newer than me, show him how to sharpen his skills.

Jeff Schulte: 2:20

Yeah, that's exactly sharpening skills. And he's very competent. And he's been in the business a long time. And I was just guiding him through a very difficult

John Laforme: 2:31

pool inspection inspection. So let me let me stop you there for a second. So something I haven't pointed out yet with you is, you know, there is a difference from building pools, and inspecting pools, would you say, of course, there, okay. So that's the same thing with home inspectors like myself, as opposed to contractor coming to inspect your house. So when a contractor comes over to inspect someone's house, they are not doing anything close to what a home inspector does. Just want to put that out there. So people understand that I'm just gonna get a contractor come over and he's gonna walk through your house and leave. That's all he's gonna do. Oh, yeah, that looks good. Okay, yeah, we can do that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You gotta raise foundation. Yeah, he's not gonna go into your house. They just don't do any of that stuff to now go in the attic. So tell me a similar comparison on the pool side of things.

Jeff Schulte: 3:23

Well, a contractor has a certain mindset when he's walking in money, money, and he's looking for a contract. And he may or may not want to do the job. But he's going to point out a lot of things that may or may not be an actual problem. And it depends upon his skill. There are contractors who have been in business for 30 years. And they have 30 cumulative years of experience, they learned something new all each year. And then their contractors who do the same thing every single year for 30 years, right, and their breadth of knowledge is very limited. But they still call themselves contractors, and they can still be licensed by the state. Got it Spectre has a world wide view of what he's looking at. He looks at all of the details. He's checked on what needs to be done the different levels of skills that were provided, constructing this house with his checklist, which he has honed over the years, he has a certain number of things that he wants to look at, in addition to what other people would consider to be normal. Right? So he's much more professional about what he's doing.

John Laforme: 4:43

Right? He's more detailed, so it's more detail oriented. He's got to list it. He's got a checklist he's going through, make sure everything's functioning and so forth, right.

Jeff Schulte: 4:52

And then he's gonna write his opinion, whether it meets industry standards doesn't meet industry standard and why

John Laforme: 4:59

got it okay. So let's get back to this interesting pool story that you have. So I actually pulled up the photos that you had text me a while back. This is like, wow. So you How old is this pool?

Jeff Schulte: 5:14

This pool is about a year old.

John Laforme: 5:17

That is a disaster. And that's just my first glance.

Jeff Schulte: 5:22

It's not holding water. So the owner drained it, he was afraid that too much water is being leaked back into the earth, which makes the problem even more compounded was

John Laforme: 5:32

this on a flat water hillside,

Jeff Schulte: 5:34

it's on a hillside. That's not good. So what we can't see right a lot in front was cut and there's a hillside going up behind this cut and filled across the street is cut and filled is when it's just cut.

John Laforme: 5:51

Okay. So the cracks here. What What caught my eye right away was all this white. So it looks like the pool was leaking. Something was leaking into the pool itself. Am I right?

Jeff Schulte: 6:07

Yes, the groundwater level is high. And the pool had been leaking and waters transferring back and forth from the pool to the earth and from the earth to the pool. Wow. So

John Laforme: 6:22

Oh, I see. So water from the pool was going through the cracks. And then it was coming back in. Right. Wow. Interesting.

Jeff Schulte: 6:30

So here we have salts and minerals that are being brought up from the soil through the concrete and it's dissolving the structure and it comes out through the cracks and precipitates onto the surface of the pool.

John Laforme: 6:47

And I noticed to get this restaurant here, how do you get rust in a one year old pool,

Jeff Schulte: 6:51

the pool is constructed of a steel shell. And then it's shot over with goodnight. And the steel has been exposed to a lot of water, and it's resting through the shell of the pool. Now there are two types of pool shells. There's Ghanaian where they mix sand and cement on site, and then they blast it through a hose. And it's wetted at the end when it comes out and they spray it on and build a pool shell that does that premix it's not premix it's mixed on site mixed on site. Okay, then there's shotcrete, which is pretty mixed, okay. And it comes from a batch Platt and it's guaranteed at a certain strength as it comes off the truck. And it's wet and it's sprayed through a hose. And it's deposited on and then it's cut and smooth.

John Laforme: 7:43

What do you mean by cut?

Jeff Schulte: 7:45

When it's sprayed onto the surface of the pool, it's very rough, and it's wavy. And so they overspray it so that it's large, thicker than it needs to be. And then they take up to five inch knives, and the trolls and stuff. Yeah, on the carpet. Got it. This pool is from the lat. The former it's gun night. And with gun eight. The mixture comes in a big pile of sand out front. And there's a big container of raw, unmixed cement powder. And there's a machine with a screw that's maybe 10 feet tall. And they dump sand in one side of this machine and they dump Summit and the other and as it grows up goes up the screw mix. It blends it to a certain strength and there's dials and gauges that tell the operator of this machine right? how strong it is. The problem is, and this is the little secret that nobody knows about a shift don't tell me a secret. After a couple of uses the dials and gauges get so incrusted with submit can't read them. Oh shit. So they listen for the sound that the machine makes. As it's mixing, it makes us makes a certain noise. And you can be way off in the strength I bet gonna. So all the independent guys don't use Ghana, we all use shotcrete.

John Laforme: 9:17

So if someone's using the other, you want to make sure you go out there and check their gauges first make sure they can read.

Jeff Schulte: 9:22

Yes, and there's such a thing as taking samples. And you can take samples by making a panel that's approximately 12 inches by 12 inches by six inches thick and shooting a little paddle and carving it and setting that aside. It can be sent to a lab or you can shoot cylinders. If they're large enough, and there's several ways to take samples and they go to a lab and they're guaranteed at a certain strike.

John Laforme: 9:47

ICC can take samples before you actually shoot the pool. Yes. Well, wouldn't that take days or weeks before you actually get to have a shoot the pool does. So it slows things down. But if you want to be really precise So that's a good way to do it.

Jeff Schulte: 10:01

Yeah, typically they're taken as you're building the shell of the pool. And then it's just the lab samples are tested up to 28 days later, and then you get those results confirming that the pool was built as it should have been.

John Laforme: 10:15

Oh, I see. But if it's wrong, if it's wrong, if and you get bad news you got Yes, that's exactly right. Now the contractor is obligated to come back and rip it all out.

Jeff Schulte: 10:26

I actually don't know, I don't, I only know when a pool is failed, whether it needs to be ripped out or not. Sometimes a pool can be less strong than it's supposed to be. And it works and works for years and years and years. I see.

John Laforme: 10:42

Okay, so these cracks, let's get into what my customers typically freak out over. And that's a crack because crack kills and crack bad that crack kills deals. So sometimes I'll see like a really hairline crack and a surface. That's, you know, look, we're all looking at the pool. The customers don't understand that my eyes only work as good as their eyes. And I can only see through the water like they can they they think I'm coming in with, you know, Superman eyes and X ray vision. And I can predict what's going to happen underneath the surface. That's not the case, I'm only doing a visual inspection. But if I see a hairline crack, I usually tell him you know, what, if I think it's just a hairline crack, just on the final finish, I found look, it looks like a hairline crack, it's most likely superficial, but you'd have to have a contractor full contract to come out and look at it and let you know for sure. And then give you a a course of action to fix it, and possible prices and stuff like that. So is that good advice?

Jeff Schulte: 11:47

That's very good advice. And alarming somebody unnecessarily is not a good thing now. So here you've taken that portion of the scare the worry out of it, right? It's not atypical for a plaster to have been installed and it takes a day or to to fill up the pool. And what happens is the plaster will dry to the touch. But it cures under water for the next 28 days just like cement does. And while it's dry, it's shrinking. And there may be maybe microscopic cracks in the surface, which don't amount to anything in the industry understands that. It can still meet industry standard with spider webbing cracks are small cracks, and they're not structural and they're not leaking.

John Laforme: 12:35

So here's a better question. Maybe maybe this is a better question. Any type of a finished crack on the surface, should it be fixed right away?

Jeff Schulte: 12:45

No. On a brand new plaster job when you've just filled the pool, in the first week, you may notice a lot of cracks on the surface. But this amazing thing happens through water chemistry and that's that the water will leach out calcium out of the plaster surface. And most cases they'll mend themselves these cracks. Rarely, they'll seal you may still be able to see the cracks, but they'll be completely sealed over.

John Laforme: 13:17

We have but what if it's not a new pool, if it's an old pool,

Jeff Schulte: 13:21

and we see cracks, especially like cracks like these where it's those are excessive, readily available. Visible, it's possible to take some dye and the dye can be in the form of a one ounce bottle of phenol red in your protest kit, or methylene blue, or it could be a half ounce bottle of food dye that you have in your kitchen cabinet. And if you pull this dye out and unscrew the top, and squeeze a couple of drops underwater right next to the crack. If it's leaking, the dye will go right into the cracks. That's a good way to

John Laforme: 13:58

test the skimmer. It is and I'm gonna jump off note real quick off topic and jump right into that tell a quick story about that I had a pool years ago in Chatsworth, and I was losing water. And I knew I was really focused on watching this pool to see what I was doing. That's just how I am little to animals sometimes. And I noticed every couple of days I had to pull water and like I said this things leak I had no visible cracks around the base of the pool inside the pool anywhere. The tile all looked good. I didn't see any kind of abnormalities around the surface or anything like that. So it's got to be my skimmer. So before I thought of using the dye, then again I was thinking the dye thing and it's kind of amateur to me. I was just thinking now that's probably not the best way to do it. So I contacted a leak detection company. What a fucking scam that was dude. I'm not going to give you the guy's name that this guy I was at idiot. And so he sends out one of his guys. And he puts this little probe inside the water walks around for about, I don't know, 1015 minutes. Yeah, I know. We're not really noticing any leaks. Like, okay. It was a sound device you put in there a hydrophone. Yeah. So that's what he was using. So they charged me$375 for that. So I'm like, Well, I tried it. He came out, he did his service, which I think was absolute bullshit. So now I'm thinking, You know what, I'm going to prove this guy wrong. So I went down to the pool store, grab the dye, brought it home, put it right next to my skimmer. That blue dye shot right into that, right into that cracks in the scammer, which he never even looked at. So I called the owner, I said, Hey, you just send your guy back out here. I didn't tell him what I did yet. And check this pool. Again, for leaks. I know this pool is leaking. So he sends this guy out. And he comes back. And in the process of the phone call, I said, By the way, I paid you $375. And when your guy left, put a stop payment on that check. He's like, really? What would you do if when he starts getting all ugly with me on the phone? I said, Listen, I'm not going to let you scam me and take my money for doing nothing. So you get your guy back here to look at this pool again. Because I already found the leak. I didn't tell him I found the leak. I want to see what they would do. The guy comes back out, walks up and he goes, Yeah, my boss wants us to get paid first. And like that ain't happening. You have a nice day. So tentative, then the owner of the company would talk that we're yelling at each other on the phone and say, Hey, man, do what you got to do. You're not scamming me. Said I already found the leak leaks in the skimmer and your guy with all his technology, who spent 1015 minutes on my pool couldn't find anything. You think I'm going to keep use $375? I don't think so. He he took he took my case, went down to the DHS office tried to have have me charged with writing bad checks. Mike, I didn't write a bad check. I put a stop payment on a check. And I had the amount of money in the account. So that's not how the law works. So I had knew how the law worked on that. And then he says, Well, you're not going to get less than me. You're going to pay me trust me as I want you to come down here yourself. Because he's talking all tough with me on the phone. You have no you don't want a piece of me. You don't want to mess with me. As I do. Come on down. I got a big, nice big front line, we can have a little talk out there. I was challenging the guy. Because he was such a dick on the phone. I wasn't being a dick with him. He just he started the whole he started the whole thing about you know, just get raising his voice. You don't know who you're messing with. And all this. I'm like, Come on, dude, seriously. You're a business owner and you're talking like this. So long story short, I get this letter in the mail weeks later from the district attorney's office saying that I need to get out there and explain this. I call my lawyer I send it over to him because I'll take care of that. Had that thing snuffed immediately. That's what happened with a pool Leak Detection company. So what's your thought on pool leak detection? In general?

Jeff Schulte: 18:33

I am not a leak detector. That's a profession within its own. Is it snake oil? It can be but we've used people in the past that have found leaks that I never could have found. Oh, really? Okay. So it does work. It does work. It just you've got to have an ethical company after that. Yeah, I believe the company that you're referring to I'm not gonna mention the name. We'll talk about that later. Yeah. The gentleman retired and sold the company and the new people are much better. Ah, yeah. If I'm thinking of the same one you are.

John Laforme: 19:06

Yeah. So anyway, back to this pool story. Here's another photo.

Jeff Schulte: 19:11

Okay, we're looking at a photo. There's a second

John Laforme: 19:14

photograph. Go back to the first one. First one, okay.

Jeff Schulte: 19:17

Okay, this has two parallel cracks right across the middle of the pool. Yep. And when I see parallel cracks like that, especially if they're spaced 18 inches on center, or 24 inches on center. 12 inches on center. It makes me think that those cracks lie right over rebar that's not covered by enough concrete. And a crack would occur there.

John Laforme: 19:40

So what you're saying is the rebar is too close to the surface.

Jeff Schulte: 19:43

Exactly. Yep. So that's one thing that comes to mind here but there are just so many cracks in this.

John Laforme: 19:50

Yeah, that's the rust thing caught my eye right away. Like I said, all these these these are these considered like fissures.

Jeff Schulte: 19:57

You could call them fissures.

John Laforme: 19:58

Yeah. Okay, so can we go the next photo? Yes. All right. So here's the second one. I said more of a close up of the side of the pool is that looks like probably the deeper end.

Jeff Schulte: 20:09

We call this a blown shell where it cannot be fixed. There's no repairs that are FUBAR. Yes, fouled up yet. Any recognition.

John Laforme: 20:18

You use the word file. I was going to use another word, but that's okay. Yeah, well, I

Jeff Schulte: 20:22

don't know all of the audience here.

John Laforme: 20:26

I don't think I've offended anybody yet. Sorry. If I did, it's unintentional.

Jeff Schulte: 20:31

It's just another snafu. Isn't it? Another snafu situation? Normal, all fouled up? Yes.

John Laforme: 20:38

So yeah, this, these are a lot of cracks, I've yet to see a pool in this condition. I have not seen one like this.

Jeff Schulte: 20:45

To see a pool in this condition mean, there's a lot of movement going on, underneath where you can't see it. Right, a soil underneath the pool is moving, the pool itself is moving, it takes a lot of force to cause cracks like this to occur. So for me, this is water groundwater in the soil that's very close to the surface. It's a weak pool shell. If the pool hadn't moved like this, it likely would have just floated out of the ground, like a concrete boat.

John Laforme: 21:16

A concrete boat. Yes. I've heard of those stories where they kind of pop right up pop out of the ground, you know, what a ride out would be if you were actually in the pool when it happened. You wouldn't even

Jeff Schulte: 21:27

notice it. It happens so slowly. I once knew and this is just an anecdote, but a guy who drained a pool to acid wash it. And he's done wrong, the bottom of the pool, and he gets out. And all of a sudden he looks around. What's strange about this in the pool had was about four to six inches. But it doesn't raise out of the ground evenly. One end was still close to the level, right? And the other like, that's stilted. Oh, wow. Now when a pool pops out of the ground, it doesn't come out of the pool evenly and there's not a gap underneath the pool. It sucks up mud and dirt with

John Laforme: 22:08

that. So it can't be real filling in that empty space as it comes up. You can't re level this pool of water a mess. You got it. So you gotta jackhammer that apart and redo it right. There you go, wow. That's a big mess.

Jeff Schulte: 22:21

That's a big mess. And that's likely what's going to happen here. And this pool is going to need to be Jack hammered out and completely rebuilt. But you can't just do the pool shell, you've got to do the coping and the steps and all of the cement work around

John Laforme: 22:35

Well, I really hope the owner of this pool was able to get some recourse out of the person who put it in. Because that's That's an expensive thing that probably have to probably in litigation over right now. Yeah,

Jeff Schulte: 22:47

I can't comment. Sure. No, I

John Laforme: 22:49

didn't think you would, but I'm just saying on a legal side of things. I mean, that's a big job. And that's what's what 50 to $100,000 for a pool

Jeff Schulte: 22:58

to remove the pool. It could be 30 to 50,000. Just to Remove to remove Well, yeah, it's got to be broken up into pieces and allow it all back and dump fees and howling fees, and oh my gosh,

John Laforme: 23:12

yes, it's expensive than fees and cheap.

Jeff Schulte: 23:16

They charge by the pound now. Yeah. Used to be by the truckload, but that those days are long gone. And you can't just start building a new pool, you've got to get new permits, and you've got to get geo soils approvals. Once you dig this pool out, you may have to dig out several more feet of soil till you find good soil underneath this, then you backfill it with solid cement and maybe some steel in there, then you can start.

John Laforme: 23:46

So this pool is obviously empty right now. So you guys showed up. It was already empty. Yes. So that was because it was leaking. That's right. You mentioned the homeowners was worried about it. Leaking more water into the ground. Right. That's what you mentioned. Yeah. So what is the one thing that a pool needs to be properly inspected when you show up to do an inspection?

Jeff Schulte: 24:11

I'm following this. Following that. Yeah,

John Laforme: 24:14

it needs water.

Jeff Schulte: 24:16

Okay, so So, right over my sales

John Laforme: 24:19

kind of it's kind of a obvious, it's an obvious thing. But it can be a trick question. So what's the one thing a pool needs to go inspect it?

Jeff Schulte: 24:29

On the standard inspection? You gotta have water,

John Laforme: 24:31

you need water, right? So I've shown up to houses to do pool inspections, and there's no water. So the customer is like, what can you do? I said, I'm gonna just refund your money. There's nothing I can do here. Except, say there's no water in your pool. Because there's no water in your pool. I can't turn on your filtration system. I can't test any of that. You don't want to you don't even tell if it's level, right. You don't want to I don't want to run this thing dry yet. I can't turn on these pumps and stuff like that. It's nothing I can do. Here's your money back. You need to have this thing filled. And if you want me to come back then then we can redo the deal. And I'll come back up. But because it's empty, that to me is kind of a red flag. Why is it? Why is it empty? So

Jeff Schulte: 25:14

that's a good supposition, because pools only empty for a reason,

John Laforme: 25:19

right? Switches are shut off, typically, for a reason. Like circuit breakers on a panel, they're off typically for a reason. Either they keep tripping, or someone turns it off, because they know there's a problem. So it kind of goes along the same line there. So my point is, anybody that's looking for a pool inspection, you know, make sure you have water in the pool before you have us come over.

Jeff Schulte: 25:45

That's one and the other is make sure the water is clear. So we can view the boat. Yeah,

John Laforme: 25:50

yeah. So that's another thing I ran into before to hey, you know, John, we need the pool inspection to but the pools kind of green said, Well, it's got water in it, right? Yeah, well, I can at least run it. I can run the system. I can't comment on the pool surface, because I can't see it. If you're okay with that, we can proceed. If you don't want, you want to wait till it's clear. But when I showed up, the guy had come out and shocked it. And it was clear enough, it was a little cloudy. But it was it was better.

Jeff Schulte: 26:21

And it's like you're going out to a house and it has no electricity, or the gas has been shut off. And you can't do your complete

John Laforme: 26:29

I can I write I can't test but I can still look at the components, like on a home inspection. If the gas is off, I can still inspect the gas appliances, but I can't test them. Right. I just can't turn it. But I can see if the connections are good. They looks like they're safely installed. They have the right vent piping, there's a lot of things I can still do. So I always tell people look, I can still look at this stuff. You're not getting shortchanged by me, I just can't turn it on. We got some more photos here. I just love this pool.

Jeff Schulte: 26:58

This is a photo going through the steps of the pool and a big chunk up in the upper right has popped off showing the depth of the of the crack. Now as we're looking at this crack, we can see up in the upper right, it's wide, it's between an eighth of an inch and a quarter inch wide. Yeah, looks like a piece broke off right there piece broke off. And then we can see a line of putty. Yes, epoxy putty that was hastily installed as a temporary fix. Right, and it doesn't match and color doesn't match and texture. Who knows why it doesn't go all the way up and all the

John Laforme: 27:42

way that looks like the stuff you would use for like a small crack on a skimmer.

Jeff Schulte: 27:46

Right? It's a temporary thing that's like a band aid a band aid. Yeah, so it might get you through a season or longer, but eventually it will fall off.

John Laforme: 27:56

Right, right. Right. So this picture is very busy. I noticed these looks like grinding marks right here and the finish.

Jeff Schulte: 28:02

That's what it looks like and then slide over to the fitting right there. Yeah, look at that. So this is you can see the aggregate Yeah, this is not the quality of installation. I would like to see

John Laforme: 28:16

now I've I've yet to see something like this. Craziest, this craziest pool finish I've ever seen was a just worn out. Like it almost looked like a leopard. This pool finish. The best term I could say was it looked like a leopard. They said spots everywhere. And what it was is there's just a whole bunch of missing pieces of the finish. And it's kind of weird. And the realtor looked at me goes oh no, that they did it that way. They designed it that way. I say Oh really?

Jeff Schulte: 28:50

Do you have a picture of that available?

John Laforme: 28:53

I don't because I'd have to really research. I just thought of it now. So if I had thought of it sooner I had it ready to go. But it was not part of the pool. It was a damaged finish. And but it was just very consistent all the way through it. And I said Ma'am, this is not the way it was made. If I

Jeff Schulte: 29:14

see a pool with a surface like that, and the the holes or the spots can be dime sized or bigger. That can be a foot in diameter. Most of them are typically small between a dime and half dollar size. To me that we call that spalling. And right the top surface level layer or part of the top surface layer is dried out has dried out quicker than the underlying material. And when we plaster a pool or traveling it and we're pushing the heavy particles down and the fine particles come up to the surface. That's what makes it really smooth rather than The grainy, right and that top layer of fine particles separates typically in the pools had way too many chemicals installed, such as acid or it's been emptied and dried out for a long time where it begins to self peel. And when that happens, it can be rough and it can be dangerous to little kids feeds probably not adults because we've all got calluses on our feet, but it can it can cut up a child's feet and you wouldn't necessarily notice it while the child is in the pool because the blood dissipates in the water

John Laforme: 30:41

and they just have so much fun.

Jeff Schulte: 30:44

But then they get out of the pool and their feet are red and cut. Oh my gosh. It's a horror