Disasterous Replastering

[umphreak]

I recently bought a house in Ohio with an indoor pool. It needed to be replastered due to some cracks and some rebar bleeding through near the pool light. We engaged the most reputable (who was not the cheapest) company in town to complete the project.

First, the pool--I choose Sunstone Blue Quartz. They finished the pool and I immediately noticed some extremely visible color changes in the pool surface. It seems like either different color batches or mixing issues. The color is not even close to being consistent throughout the pool surface. I was told that this is "normal" and that in about 6-9 months, it will go away as the chemicals even out the coloring. Is this true?

Second, the attached spa could not hold water after being replastered. In a 1000 gallon spa, it dropped several inches a day when full, slower as it lost more volume. They spent a month trying to locate the issue. Pressure checked the lines. Nothing would work. One odd thing I noticed was that when we drained the spa, bubbles would form in certain areas when the water level approached the area. Some areas bubbled A LOT. But if there was a lot of water, you couldn't see anything and a dye test didn't indicate anything at all. They replastered a second time. But again, it couldn't hold water. They even had Advance Leak Detection out to figure out the location of the leak. When he couldn't find anything, I tried to find the bubbles again. The really bad area didn't have bubbles, but other areas DID show bubbles. Again, they never could figure out where the leak was. When faced with replastering it AGAIN, we opted to allow them to epoxy it. Sure, i'd much rather it match the pool, but the epoxy is smoother and I don't want them to screw it up AGAIN. And now, of course, the epoxy job is horrible and i'm dealing with that right now. They got epoxy on the tiles, saying they wanted to make sure that wasn't a leaking area and that i' wouldn't notice it when the spa was filled with water. Yeah right. Granted, these guys have really stuck with me throughout this disaster, but they still can't seem to get it right. I obviously don't have any idea what will happen when they refill the spa again--though I want a second coat considering the poor coverage. Any ideas here?

And to make matters even worse, so far, I've had the impeller burn out (supposedly a freak accident--I bet it was debris from the refinishing), a leak in the plumbing after they checked the pressure on the lines and my SWG isn't working. They say the salt is too high, but the reading shows 3400 or 3500. Shuts off after a few minutes. Salt cell works (per their tests) and is now clean. Works for "Superchlorinate" but not on regular operation. Any ideas here?

[czechmate]

Isolate the spa from the water cycle and see if you still loosing water. Often the culprit is there. Settlement, poor procedure in gluing pipes in the hot or wet weather etc.

As far as uniformity of plaster it depends on many things. Uniform mixing as well as the same lot numbers of bags delivered. The crew should be aware that odd bags should be added sparingly during the mixing process. Also, weather element during application is crucial, since in the windy condition when surface is drying faster, "trowel burn" can occur that has a brownish tint and is impossible to remedy(except sanding). Also the cleats mark will sometimes show afterwards. These are the refilled spots where the material is missing proper mix of quartz, because it comes from diluted surface material. These can be avoided partially by a dedicated crew, but to certain extend will always be there.