Hi Guys,
Just wondering if I could get some advice.
Over the last 10 years we have had several unsuccessful attempts at securing some bull nose edge tiles to the top lip of an in ground acrylic pool (salt-chlorinated). The original builder had two attempts over 7 years, and then 3 years ago we sourced a "specialist" who tried again (at some considerable expense). As of today, about 70% of the tiles have lost adhesion to the acrylic pool lip which they sit on.
The decking around the pool is timber, so the tiles sit alone on the lip of the pool. Being bull-nose style tiles, I suspect that when people stand on the edge of them, there is a massive force levering on the tile which eventually breaks the adhesion to the acrylic pool lip. Also, the lip itself does not have a lot of bracing, so I think it flexes too.
From what I can see, the "glue" is one of those flexible cements - white in colour. I can't remember the name, I just remember seeing it being mixed.
I spoke to a SIKA technical specialist, and he believes our problems have been due to the previous adhesives being attacked by the Chlorine from the pool water.
His advice was to use Chlorine tolerant adhesive like the Sikadur-33 epoxy.
I checked the top of the pool and there doesn't seem to be any evidence of it being roughed up/scratched to help the adhesive to key-in.
Going down the epoxy road is going to be really expensive (probably over $1000 in epoxy alone) but I'd rather do this properly than having to do it again in 3 years for the 4th time.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Cheers,
Luke