Ignoring the environmental aspects, paint stripper is a thin-film application, you don’t need a entire pool’s worth. Typical application is between 1/8 to 1/4 in. For the Lincoln Reflecting pool that comes to about 55,000 gallons, or 7-10 tanker truckloads. The lowest 55-gallon price I found was $1,417 per drum for a methylene-chloride-based semi-paste stripper, so about $1.41 million worth of paint stripper to cover the entire surface of the bottom of the pool, before you add on the transport and labor costs.
Of course, in reality most of the paint will be mechanically removed, and by the looks of things that wont even be that difficult. The stuff is peeling off just fine on it’s own. Far less tripper will actually be needed to remove the stubborn bits.
Is there a physical way to remove the paint without using chemical stripper?
I’m wondering about resurfacing the concrete base of the pool.
Treat it as a construction project, not a painting project.
Scrape off the top inch of the painted concrete, and then pour a new layer of concrete.
Is this feasible?
Or even without scraping off the old stuff. Just pour a new layer of cement on top of the blue-painted stuff.
The pool is 2 feet deep, so adding a 3-inch layer of concrete would not be noticable.
Any stripper worth using is extremely toxic.. extremely expensive, plus disposal coasts. Mechanical grinding would work, down to fresh or stable concrete. Big job though. Also disposal costs.
Ive resurfaced pools before, and getting a clean substrate to bond to is not easy.
Any irregular areas trapping debris etc must be scoured out. There are waterproofing cemetious coatings that are brushed, sprayed or rolled on. That’s how pools are sealed. "Sika Thoroseal " is a well known brand.
But the actual question is (paraphrased) “how much paint stripper would it take to raise the concentration in the pool to be high enough to strip the paint”.
The OP even gave the dimensions of the pool, if they were just looking for the volume, presumable they could’ve figured it out on their own, and chemistry not being their strong suit wouldn’t come into play.
They also followed up with asking if someone dumping a tanker truck into the pool in the middle of the night would be enough.
My WAG is that the real question is “Is it even possible for someone to add enough paint stripper to the pool to do this much damage without being noticed?”. IOW, would doing this take one tanker truck or 50 tanker trucks.
Of course the plus side to applying that concentration of paint stripper is that it would certainly kill off the algae … along with any other lifeform that happened to fall into the pool.
I assume they didn’t actually test the water for the presence of any kind of paint stripper? In fact, I’m surprised they didn’t drain it before they announced that ‘theory’ since I’m guessing people with access to labs probably grabbed samples to test on their own. Not that the Trump admin wouldn’t just make up BS results while saying the independent labs not only lied about there not being anything in it, they also need to be arrested and investigated for stealing the water and doing illegal tests on it.
And, similarly, given that they accused someone from the left of adding something to the water, I further assume they have no camera footage of it happening or we’d have seen it by now. I suppose these two assumptions go hand in hand. I’m WAGing any chemical they claimed to find would likely need to be in concentrations high enough that, and I know it’s what the thread is about, it would be noticed on camera. That is, this wasn’t caused by someone dumping a few water bottles worth of chemicals into the pool.
Add this to the list of things the next, non-MAGA president can promise to restore as part of their campaign. I would imagine, on the list of items that need to be repaired/restored, this’ll be one of cheaper things.
Since the question seems to have been answered (couldn’t be done in any practical sense without essentially replacing the water with paint stripper), I propose another FQ answer:
It takes no paint remover to remove the paint peel on the bottom of the reflecting pool, if the paint job was done in a shoddy fashion by a crony given a no-bid contract.
Factually speaking, the paint is removing itself, due to poor workmanship.
Would the results have been compromised by chemicals from the fresh paint, assuming the discussion upthread about thinners being same as in the paint itself, for some paints? How long did it dry before being flooded?
I donno about paint strippers… I wonder if it would soak into the concrete underneath (once the pool is drained), and make it imposible to paint.
I have not seen this mess first hand, and people that try to look at it are being arrested. But once the pool is drained perhaps VERY high pressure washers. The stuff is already falling off. But then the concrete will have to really dry.
Is this topic answered enough that I can ask a related question? I understand that when the president’s car drove over the pool, it might have done some real damage – does anyone know the straight dope on that? Could that be the source of some of the peeling?
I’ll report my post so that a moderator can hide this if it’s too off-topic, or this FQ is still not sufficiently answered.
