Hi everyone! We are continuing to learn about our newly purchased 37-year-old chlorine pool, and have been feeling pretty good about it. A couple of questions:

1. I notice lots of people use Oklahoma flagstone as their coping when they are describing their new pool builds. On our "mature" pool, there is a stone retaining wall and about 25% of the coping is done with flagstone coping. We are in Oklahoma, but I know that doesn't necessarily mean we have OK flagstone. Regardless, the stone is in terrible shape. I can't imagine anyone installing this type of product on purpose. The flaking, spalling, and general degradation of this stone has me running for a man-made product for our eventual pool reno. I've searched GW and seen problems mostly with salt systems and this stone, but really, what is the life expectancy of this kind of item? Ours is definitely from the mid-70s, so it is aged, but our concrete coping in other areas is actually in pretty good shape. I am ready for them to knock out this retaining wall and stone coping and put some good old concrete in its place. The rock is constantly falling into the pool and you cannot walk on it without shoes, it is murder on the feet.

2. Our '70s in-ground hot tub has been a big learning curve, too. It turns out, there is an underground leak in the circulation pipe somewhere under a ton of concrete decking. We have recently been on an adventure with a newly discovered underground gas leak (not related to the hot tub) but they had to re-route all our pipes, set a new meter, and we found our hot-tub heater was incorrectly tied into our main gas service. So many beans later, we are at the point of another couple of grand to bore a new line to connect to the hot tub heater. I'm going to do it, because what is a hot tub without heat, but I'm really wanting to fix the underground leak. Our plumber mentioned an epoxy that a vendor in CA keeps trying to get him to try, to shoot it in the pipe and it should fix leaks without having to break up the concrete. We would be a "test case" and used as a demonstration. On one hand, I'm for it, it will be a reduced price and the hot tub already can't circulate the same water long enough for it to be heated (we have to run a hose in the hot tub as the pump runs). On the other hand, I'm scared! Anyone heard of this miracle epoxy fix and what are your experiences?

A full pool and hot tub reno is a few years in the future at this point. We spent a few hours using a flxible sealer to glue on a dozen tiles today, and are hoping to keep it going as is for at least two years.