Penguin Pools often comes across rock or bad fill in many newer subdivisions.  Builders take fill from one site and put it on another site until they don’t have any more sites to hid the fill.  Rock and buried construction trash makes building an inground pool very challenging.  When building a vinyl liner pool, the walls have to sit on virgin ground so there is no worry about settling.  When you hit soil or earth that doesn’t hold its form / collapses, you need to find away to create virgin soil.

In the Milwaukee, WI area we hit clay or rock 90% of the time.  Rock is most common in the Waukesha, Merton, Hartland, Sussex areas; however we have had poor conditions in Waterford, Menomonee Falls and Brookfield areas.

The way Penguin Pools of Milwaukee & Minneapolis builds vinyl liner pools on rock is fairly simple.

1.  Dig your pool like normal to spec.  The earth will fall and crumble making your dig shelf and ramps useless . . . Like the above picture.
2.  Order Traffic Bond (usually 1/4″ with fines) and fill in the hole you just dug.  This is the same material that gets compacted under your concrete flat work.
4.  Once you pool dig is level along the entire dig shelf, leave it sit until it is completely dry.  It is usually fine to work with the next day, but may take up to 24 hours.

5.  Now you can re-dig your pool to specs and the walls will hold.  The compacted TB dries like concrete and you now have virgin ground to build on.  Your vinyl liner inground swimming pool will not settle or have issues due to poor soil.  Just be aware that hand forming will be difficult due to the strength of the compacted TB.

***  Just an FYI, this requires a lot of TB 10 – 15 full dump trucks (quads).  Don’t worry, this can then be used as backfill if you so choose.

Here is another slideshow of a pool we did in 2004.

Many pool builders will just use a patch to cover a wound.  Using vermiculite to patch voids is an easy and cheap way to rectify the problem, however it isn’t the correct way to do it.  You need to create the correct earth to build on so your pool will not have issues 5, 10, 30 years down the road.  This costs more, but it is the correct way to do it and will prevent you from having to pre-maturely get a vinyl liner replacement on your swimming pool.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact Penguin Pools of Milwaukee or Minneapolis.

By having your designs pre-built, we can install them quicker and for less money than if we built the whole thing from scratch.  You can combine fireplaces, wet bars,  grills, benches, tables, firepits … the options are endless.

These units really transform and inground vinyl liner pool into something great.

The great thing is that Harmony is located in WI so it has distributors like us (Penguin Pools) in Waukesha, New Berlin, Merton, Waterford, Brookfield, & Sussex.

If you have any questions or would like Penguin Pools to give you a free estimate, don’t hesitate to contact us directly.

The Lacrosse, WI location will be the third location for Penguin Pools (parent company Penguin Systems Unlimited) creating one of the strongest companies in the Midwest. Penguin Pools can handle any swimming pool installation or repair job in WI, MN, or Northern IL, Northern IA.

Penguin Pools specializes in Vinyl Liner, Concrete, 1-piece Viking and free form Armor Fiberglass swimming pools along with spas, custom water features, and designer concrete patios. With offices in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Lacrosse & Milwaukee, WI we have the manpower to service anyone in the Midwest.

Feel free to contact us directly at any of our stores.