Most pools come with a vinyl liner. That’s generally a good thing, since they can make it a much more pleasant place to swim. Unfortunately, they also need to be replaced from time to time. Many of them get replaced long before they wear out because they get damaged over the course of normal use. That’s a shame, because it’s relatively easy to keep a vinyl pool liner in good condition for many years.
Keep Animals Away
“Vinyl pool liners simply are not designed to withstand sharp claws,” said LinerLux, Inc. Animals can easily destroy them, so it’s best to take care when allowing them near the pool. That isn’t to say that your dog can’t enjoy a swim if it wants to, but he should only do when supervised. If the animal is starting to claw at the liner, make sure that you get it out of the pool quickly.
Wild animals can also be fairly destructive. Small ones, such as raccoons, usually are not a big problem. They might do some damage to the edge of the liner, but they are not going to go swimming near the bottom of the pool. The bigger danger comes from larger animals. They won’t swim deliberately under most circumstances, but they have been known to fall into pools and cause some damage. There are some easy ways to keep most mammals from causing trouble. None of them work all the time, but they can significantly reduce the risk.
No Sharp Objects Near The Pool
Artificial sharp objects are just as dangerous as claws. In most cases, there’s no reason to leave them near the pool in the first place, but people sometimes do it by accident. That’s harmless until somebody decides to get careless with them and get a blade too close to the liner. The most common culprit is child or teenager that thought it would be fun to play with a garden tool. If everyone who gets near the pool uses good judgment and avoids playing with sharp objects, keeping them near the pool won’t be a big deal. Even so, it’s better to be safe than sorry, and there’s no reason to take the risk.
Proper Water Levels
Try to keep your pool full as often as possible in order to avoid damage to the vinyl liner. Vinyl tends to shrink when you take it out of the water, which can easily cause it to tear. This sometimes happens when the water level goes down deliberately, usually when people are draining the pool in order to clean it or make a repair. You can avoid most of the damage to the liner when doing so if the pool is drained very carefully, so that isn’t a huge deal. Instead, focus on making sure that the water level does not go down too much due to evaporation or spillage. That will do just as much damage as deliberate draining, and it’s much harder to prevent problems under those circumstances.
Damage Prevention Techniques
Fortunately, there’s a simple tool that can prevent almost every problem that leads to damaged pool liners. Simply keeping the pool covered when it is not in use is all that it takes to prevent most of these problems. It will help to make sure that animals can’t get into the pool, which will make sure that they don’t cause any damage. It will also help to control evaporation, so you don’t have to spend as much time making sure that the pool is staying full.
The thing that it cannot do is stop the pool liner from getting damaged when it is in use. The only way to stop that from happening is to make sure that people are responsible when they use the pool. The average vinyl pool liner is fairly tough, so it isn’t going to tear over the course of normal use. The damage will come from people who are doing things that they are not supposed to be doing in the pool. To prevent that, simply lay out clear and simple rules to make sure that people treat the pool with respect. As long as everyone understands why the rules are in place, they will prevent most of the damage.
