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Pool Remodeling Insights · The Journal

Why pools fail here,
explained properly.

Most pool advice online is written to rank rather than to help, which is why so much of it describes the visible work and never the cause. These are the causes, written by the person who does the repairs.

Written by Clayton Waggoner, Owner Causes, not symptoms Sourced and dated

The latest

August 2026
A waterfront Naples home at sunset with its pool and deck seen from above Latest · Working out what is wrong

Should I resurface or remodel, and what decides which?

This gets asked as though it were a size question, a small job against a big one, settled by budget. It is really a sequence question. A pool is a stack of layers that meet each other at joints, each layer ages at its own rate, and work on an outer layer damages a newer inner one. Get the order wrong and you pay for the same surface twice.

Read the article → August 2026 · Clayton Waggoner

The library

Every article, by question

Each one starts from a question owners actually ask, and ends with what to do about it.

A waterfront Naples home at sunset with its pool and deck seen from above Working out what is wrong

Should I resurface or remodel, and what decides which?

This gets asked as though it were a size question, a small job against a big one, settled by budget. It is really a sequence question. A pool is a stack of layers that meet each other at joints, each layer ages at its own rate, and work on an outer layer damages a newer inner one. Get the order wrong and you pay for the same surface twice.

Read the article → August 2026
Pool equipment and water testing set out on coping beside still pool water Pumps, heaters and automation

What does a variable speed pump actually change?

This is usually argued as a payback calculation, as though the choice were still open. For most in-ground pools it is not: the federal standard that took effect in 2021 sets an efficiency floor that single-speed technology does not reach. The more useful question is what the standard measures, because the unit it is written in explains what a pool pump is actually for.

Read the article → August 2026
A pool equipment pad with manifold, valves and gauges against a pale house wall in late light Pumps, heaters and automation

Why is my pool heater not keeping up?

A heater that ran the pool to temperature in October and cannot manage it in January has usually not developed a fault. Two things changed, and neither of them is inside the machine. The pool started losing heat faster, and the heater started producing less, both for reasons that are written into the federal test procedure and the published energy model.

Read the article → August 2026
Palm shadows across a pale travertine pool deck running down to blue water Decks and pavers

Travertine, marble or porcelain: which pool deck actually stays coolest?

This is asked as a contest between three materials, and answered with a ranking. The measurements point somewhere else. When a national laboratory fabricated and tested a batch of concrete surfaces, reflectance varied more within that single material than the gap people argue about between material categories. The name on the invoice is a weak predictor of how the deck feels in August.

Read the article → August 2026
Palm shadows falling across a travertine pool deck laid in a running pattern beside blue water Decks and pavers

Why do paver decks sink and rut, and how is the base actually built?

A sunken paver deck is usually discussed as though the pavers went wrong. They did not. The unit is a high strength concrete product and it is the most durable thing in the assembly. Everything that decides whether a deck stays flat happens below it, before a single paver is laid, and the industry specification is unusually blunt about who is responsible for checking it.

Read the article → August 2026
Glass mosaic tile on a pool spillover edge with late sun breaking across the water Finishes, tile and stone

Why does waterline tile come off, and does re-tiling actually fix it?

Tile that has come off a waterline is usually described as having failed to stick, and the conversation goes straight to adhesive. The tile industry details the same location as a movement joint, sealed with a flexible material rather than grouted. That reframes the problem: the tile was not holding on badly, it was holding a joint shut.

Read the article → August 2026
A drained pool shell with a fresh white cementitious interior, low sun raking across the surface Finishes, tile and stone

Pebble, plaster or quartz: which pool interior actually lasts longest in Naples?

This question is usually answered with a league table: plaster at the bottom with the smallest number of years, quartz in the middle, pebble at the top. The organization whose members apply these finishes for a living publishes no such table, and its technical bulletins describe all three as one material with different stones in it. That changes the question.

Read the article → August 2026
A freshly finished pool interior with new waterline tile Finishes, tile and stone

How long does pool resurfacing last in Naples, and what makes it fail early?

Every page that answers this with a number is quoting a number nobody published. The organizations that actually study pool finishes do not publish a service life at all. They publish failure mechanisms, and that is the more useful answer because you can act on it.

Read the article → August 2026
Still pool water at the surface with travertine coping behind Working out what is wrong

Why is my pool losing water, and is it a leak or evaporation?

Almost every answer online gives you a single number for normal evaporation. The measured data says evaporation is not one number, which is exactly why the test that settles it compares your pool against itself rather than against an average.

Read the article → August 2026
Macro texture of a pebble pool interior finish under sunlit water Working out what is wrong

Is that pool crack structural, or is it cosmetic?

It is the question that decides whether resurfacing will hold or whether you will be paying for the same work twice. It is answerable, and it is answerable before anyone quotes on it.

Read the article → July 2026

The editorial standard

Written by the trade, not for the algorithm

Every article here is written by Clayton Waggoner, the owner of Splash Pools and the person physically doing the repairs these pages describe. Nothing is ghostwritten, nothing is spun from other blogs, and no number is quoted without a source you can follow.

Where the honest answer is that it depends on your street, the article says so and explains why, because in Naples the address really is half the diagnosis.

I.
Causes, not symptoms
The visible problem is the last chapter of the story. The articles start at the first.
II.
Sourced and dated
Published specifications, standards bodies and state registries, linked, so you can check them yourself.
III.
Naples specific
Salt air, dredged fill, tidal water tables and year-round chemistry, the conditions generic advice ignores.
IV.
Honest about it depends
Where no single number exists, none is invented. You get the mechanism instead, which is the part you can act on.

Reading is free.
So is the first look.

If an article got you close to your answer, the site visit gets you the rest of the way. Tell us what the pool is doing. The person who wrote these is the person who calls back.

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