When it comes to the installation of pool tile, few others in the industry have the wealth of experience and know-how that Jimmy Reed of Rock Solid Tile possesses. His innate ability to create stunningly beautiful tile interiors has helped propel him as one of the leading installers working today. As a recognized expert on the subject, he also knows a few things about adhering to the proper methods and best practices. Consequently, a recent video he posted on social media has generated quite a stir among other contractors and highlights why certain pool tile failures occur.

To get a better understanding of exactly what went wrong in the video, we caught up with Jimmy Reed at the Western Pool & Spa Show in Long Beach to get the full story as well as pick his brain about how to prevent failures like the one he demonstrates in this video.

“This particular project we actually originally bid to perform the installation on several years earlier. It was for a completely different general contractor and pool builder at the time,” explained Reed.

“I was called onto the project by the newer owner, and therefore, a new general contractor and owners rep and so forth. It was a completely different team by the time I was revisiting the project. What happened with the project though was it was failing throughout. The short little clip in the video really only showed a small portion of the spa, but that was consistent throughout the entire pool not just the spa,” said Reed.

Analyzing a Catastrophic Pool Tile Failure

In the video, you can see him pulling large chunks of tile off with his fingers with a minimal amount of effort. This was a disastrous failure where the pool tile had not properly bonded and was absorbing and retaining water.

“The thin-set is soft and gooey. It’s a modified thin-set,” said Reed in the video explaining why this particular failure occurred. “It probably wasn’t cured right. There are ridge marks everywhere. They didn’t knock down the ridges in the thin-set so they probably didn’t get 100% coverage. There’s only probably 50-60% coverage on the back of the tile. The thin-set didn’t bond to the concrete. That’s the bottom line,” explained Reed, “I don’t even see a waterproofing membrane. It looks like they applied thin-set directly to the float.”

Disastrous Pool Tile Failures Can Be a Costly Lesson

Failures of this nature can be enormously costly. “This was a fairly large free-form pool up in Beverly Hills, a little bit above Sunset, so it was in a hilly area. This pool had probably between 2,000 and 2,500 square feet of tile material that, of course, had to be completely removed. Let’s say it’s 2,500 sqft. That would be close to between $50,000 and $75,000, just for materials; and then labor for doing something like that would depend on the installer.” said Reed.

No matter what the client ultimately paid, it would appear from the catastrophic failure witnessed in the video, that it was too much. “The mortar bed was completely saturated and delaminating from the shell as you can see in the video which was just the tile layer peeling right off. There was literally no bonding between the thin-set and the substrate,” explained Reed, “all I had to do was use a screwdriver that the contractor that was there provided me with. It just opened right up and gushed out water that it was holding behind all the tile.”

Identifying The Source of The Problem

“Visually they saw bubbles. When you pushed on the bubbles, air would come out of these big lumps in the tile surface. All you had to do was push on it and things would start flying around. It was pretty bad,” remarked Reed.

“As I recall, there was no evidence of any waterproof membrane. That also tells me that there definitely wasn’t any type of colloidal silicate sprayed on the surface. The float that was applied looked to me to be very uneven and not laid out properly and it was just a very sloppy installation process from what I saw. There were grooves throughout and a lot of trail notch marks below the surface of the pool tile itself. You want to avoid that type of thing,” said Reed.

Learning The Proper Installation Technique

Because Reed sees so many failures in his line of work, we asked him where pool tile contractors could learn the proper methods of installation. “As far as the correct process, I mean, there’s a whole list of steps that goes into that type of installation from the shell out. It’s unfortunate that there aren’t a lot of places that I know of that specifically that train and walk contractors through the proper steps to do a full application,” said Reed.

“I believe Watershape University is working on something at the moment, and I may be participating with them in the near future. Also, Ask The Masters is a really good forum for professionals to inquire and share. But like any other learned trade, mentorship and experience is critical.” said Reed.

Want to take a deeper dive? Listen to our entire conversation with master tile installer, Jimmy Reed on the Pool Magazine podcast.

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