How to Get Wrinkles out of Pool Liner

  • Facing pool liner wrinkles is part of owning a pool; it’s a well-known fact. The soft and slick feeling of a smooth pool liner makes the holiday swim feel fantastic (not only for your feet but for your overall well-being). Yet, those liners in pools can quickly become wrinkled. If that happens, what could we do?
  • Wrinkles on the pool liner can push you to take various actions: avoiding colder temperatures of the pool water, looking for a plunger to remove them, adjusting water chemistry, or finding alternative ways to remove the wrinkles. If these tips don’t work out, you may need to drain the water from your pool, replace the liner, and fill the floor of your inground pool with water again. This time, paying attention not to let your pool have unwanted wrinkles.   
  • To help you go through this experience with success, we came up with a couple of tips to remove wrinkles from your pool. Wrinkles may be tough to deal with, but we’re here with the best anti wrinkle tips.

Owning a pool means having to deal with liner wrinkles. Dot. There is no way to stop that from happening, but there are options to remove wrinkles from the pool liner once they have appeared. 

When it comes to pools and their structure, wrinkles are not the same as:

  • dents
  • divots, and 
  • bumps;

Wrinkles on the floor of your inground pool are not dangerous, but their look is decidedly unpleasant. 

Continue reading to tackle with us a few promising possibilities to get rid of liner wrinkles.

Where do liner wrinkles come from?

Vinyl liners, in general, are very thin and somewhat fragile materials. 

It’s pleasurable for feet to touch the bottom of pools, exactly thanks to them. 

The market offer has a satisfying selection of styles and colors of the vinyl liner, so everyone could find something to suit their tastes.

At first, when your pool is installed, it’s normal to notice small wrinkles at the bottom of it. At this point, you should do your best not to let your vinyl liner wrinkle.

With time, these small liner wrinkles can (and probably will) grow in number if you don’t remove them. 

The vinyl liner lying on the ground of the swimming pool is comparably easy to maintain.

The only thing that you’ll sooner or later have to face is these unsightly wrinkles. 

Tip: As soon as you notice that your beloved pool is wrinkled, act on it. Allowing pool liner wrinkles to sit for too long doesn’t work to their advantage. Keep in mind that the longer they sit, the harder it will be to get rid of them.

If wrinkles develop, get to grips with the suggestions below. They will help you to get rid of or reduce wrinkles in your pool.

What is the cause the liner wrinkles?

If you’re looking for an answer on removing the wrinkles, you’ll agree with us that the wrinkled pool liners aren’t the most attractive. 

What is the cause the liner behaves this way?

There are two common reasons for this to happen.

1. Heavy rainfall/excessive water in the soil around the pool

How does it work? 

A high water table can cause the liner to lift from the pool floor (like a balloon). When the inground water recedes, the liner is too stiff to go back to the same position as before spontaneously. Too much water inground can cause wrinkles to develop.

2. Incorrect water chemistry

Pool water may have low pH, which is a reason the liner absorbs water. This situation, in turn, makes it stretch and leads to wrinkles.

Let’s see what are a few ways to remove wrinkles from a pool liner by yourself. 

They are easy to execute even if they may take a little bit of time and effort.

Remove pool liner wrinkles

Have a look at these proven tips to remove wrinkles. 

Our goal is to get your pool back to where it’s as smooth as it was the day it was installed. 

Tip: If you run into more significant issues like water leaks or wrinkles you can’t get to grips with, call in a professional to help you.

1. Fill your pool with water

Sometimes you can see wrinkles when the pool water is missing. However, you won’t have this problem after filling the tank with pool water. Try filling your pool with fresh water. When you’re pouring it, slowly work the wrinkles out.

2. Walk it through

A pair of soft soled shoes and your ground pool may want to get unwrinkled in no time. Be gentle while walking across the wrinkles, stretching them from along your steps. 

It’s a proven tip that you may get rid of most minor wrinkles thanks to your feet’ sliding movement. Keep in mind that soft soled shoes suit better for this task than barefoot.

3. Use a plunger

You may look funny at first with a plunger in hand, but ignore details. 

An excellent old toilet plunger is great for pulling out those nasty wrinkles in the liner on your pool floor. 

How to work with a toilet plunger? Place it on either side of the wrinkle and then plunge. This action will pull the liner removing it.

4. Warm the pool up

The thing is, cool water isn’t the best for a pool liner. 

It’s one of the reasons why liners develop wrinkles. 

Colder temperatures in the swimming pool naturally make liner harder, forcing it to wrinkle. 

To remove the problem, warm the water up to 92 degrees Fahrenheit. This way, the liner will soften, and your swim will become so much pleasurable. 

At this stage, with pools drain, you may want to work out the wrinkles in a couple of ways:

  • a pool brush, 
  • your feet (in soft soled shoes), or 
  • the plunger solution;

5. Drain the water

It may happen that draining your pool is the only solution that can help you remove the wrinkles. 

How to make the pool liner go back to its best condition and be able to finally swim undisturbed in your beloved pool filled with warm water? 

  1. Drain the pool to get rid of all the water from the pool area. 
  2. After draining your pool, take a shop vac and suck out unwanted wrinkles.

Important: Watch out not to let the liner dry completely! The liner should remain wet at all times. 

3. Approach every side of the wrinkle on your liner. 

4. Vacuum between the frame and the liner instead of directly on the liner. The shop vac could damage the liner.

5. Then, fill the pool with fresh water and take a swim! 

6. Check your surroundings

Take your time to observe what’s around the wall of your pool. Be sure that the pool area isn’t exposed to mistaken or excessive directing water (as it may affect pool wall and, in turn, pool liners).

Your pool may get unexpected wrinkles if your landscape around the pool is rich in:

  • trees, 
  • bushes or 
  • shrubs; 

Also, if you have noticed any shifting of the ground, you will need to act accordingly. 

Take necessary steps to shore up the ground and secure the wall where your pools are installed. Remove water excess and its damaging influence on your pool linen. 

7. Pay attention to small water leaks

While they may be tiny, water leaks are one of the most dangerous causes to wrinkle the ground of your swimming pool. 

Small water leaks at the bottom of your pool allow water to get underneath the liner. This, in turn, forces the vinyl liner up to stretch. Eventually, the liner gets wrinkles, and you have a problem. 

Part of owning swimming pools is being aware of such situations and quick to act on them. 

Important: Mind that you may have to drain the pool if it has small water leaks. It’s because patching the pool ground properly would be hard to do underwater!

8. Blow out the liner

The end of the list of how to remove wrinkles gets even more radical. 

If other options fail, consider draining your vinyl liner ground pool and blowing out the liner. 

How to conduct this mysterious operation?

1. Grab a shop vac and switch it on to working in reverse. 

2. Place the hose between the pool liner and the frame.

3. Turn it on. 

What’s the expected effect? It will push air between the liner and frame and push pool liner wrinkles out of the liner. 

4. Once the liner wrinkles have come out, reverse the suction (on vacuum).

5. Pull out the excess air that you have pushed under a vinyl liner before.

As you see, air from the vacuum can do wonders to pools affected with wrinkles. 

Be sure not to pull the liner too much when you’re working with a shop vac. It’s a fragile material and doesn’t like when you pull it, or it could break. 

If you follow these tips, you should be able to remove pool liner wrinkles fast. Wrinkles may come back one day, but you’ll be ready!

9. Call for professionals

You can go for a plunger, detect wrong directing water, or vacuum your vinyl liner thoroughly, but there are times when you will just need to call for help. 

Mind that draining your pool regularly to fix wrinkles can breach its structure. Also, consider the costs of water bills. 

If you went through all of our tips and you’re still dealing with wrinkles in your pool, be sure to call for backup.

10. Replace the liner

In case you’ve done everything with the liner in the pool by yourself, then called pool pros, and then went in despair, give it a break. 

There are times when you simply won’t be able to deal with pool liner wrinkles effectively. These creatures and their ways might be puzzling. 

Let’s face it: You may need to replace your pool liner and provide it with the one without wrinkles.  

In the worst case, when you have to replace the pools liner with a new one, make sure that it’s installed well from the beginning, showing no wrinkles or other defects. 

Anyway, we’re sure that you’ll pay attention to avoiding unwanted liner wrinkles even without our advice. 

Now, go back to enjoying a nice swim in the warm weather of your favorite pool. With liner wrinkles or without them!

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Frequently Asked Questions

Liner wrinkles are part of every vinyl liner. Vinyl is thin, so it's exposed to various physical influences. It's only a matter of how visible and distracting they are. As long as they don't cause serious problems and don't indicate any severe issues with the material itself, you can accept them as they are.
Unfortunately, that's not gonna happen. Time is rather helping your liner to deepen wrinkles. The more time passes, the more difficult they become to remove.
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