Good questions, straight answers.

Yes, any faceplate can be installed underwater.

No! Please stay out until we’ve come back to cut in the faceplates and gaskets and the pool is filled to its normal level. There is a skim coat of lightweight concrete under the liner, and footprints made now can’t be fixed until the next liner.

Rustic Pools doesn’t handle chemicals. Take a sample of your pool water to your local pool store, and they’ll tell you what you need to get the water balanced.

A saltwater chlorine generator. Liquid chlorine is the second-best option.

Salt (NaCl) is sodium plus chloride. As the pool water passes through the generator’s cell, electrolysis breaks the salt down into usable chlorine, which treats your pool.

An average home pool uses about 100 to 150 pounds of salt a year, mostly lost to splash-out and backwashing; evaporation doesn’t take salt with it.

No. The salt level in a saltwater pool is a fraction of what’s in your tears. In most cases it’s barely noticeable, and never to the point of tasting bad.

Saltwater chlorine generation is by far the cheapest and best, since the chlorine is all but free. Second, an automatic dispenser designed for large tablets. Third, any automatic dispenser. Fourth, liquid chlorine.

No. We never recommend any floating chemical dispenser in an in-ground vinyl pool; in time it will damage the liner.

Used properly in an inline chlorinator at the filter system, they’re safe in any pool. They should never go in the skimmer, where they can do extensive damage to the underground plumbing.

Yes, but stir it into a bucket of water first and then pour that into the pool. That keeps it from settling on the bottom and causing problems.

Once it’s been filled and used, you don’t want to drain an in-ground vinyl pool at all. Over time the liner becomes less pliable; when the water comes out, the liner shrinks, and when it goes back in, the liner often won’t stretch back to shape and tears. That’s an expensive mistake.

The weight and pressure of the water also help hold the walls up.

Do the bucket test. Put a five-gallon bucket on the second step and fill it to the pool’s water level (a concrete block inside keeps it in place). Over two or three days the bucket loses water to evaporation, and gains it from rain, at the same rate as the pool.

As long as there’s no splash-out or backwashing, if the pool drops more than the bucket, you have a leak. Use our bucket-test calculator.

Call us. Our electronic leak detector finds holes in vinyl liners, and we patch them. See how it works.