Pool Liner Replacement in Redwood, Texas

Houston Black clay and an emptied liner pool

The U.S. Department of Agriculture maps Houston Black clay at the center of Redwood. It makes up 80 percent of that map unit, and its shrink-swell value, a measure of how much the soil swells and shrinks with moisture, tops out at 12 percent. For shallow digging the department rates it very limited, since the sides of a trench won't stay put and the soil is too clayey. Concrete driveways and sidewalks on it get the same rating, for high shrink-swell. That's one point in the community; other soils occur elsewhere.

Clay matters most when the pool is empty. River Pools, a fiberglass pool maker, calls draining any pool risky, whether it's concrete, vinyl liner or fiberglass. Without enough water inside to push back, groundwater pressure can bulge, crack or even float a shell, and with enough lift a vinyl liner bubbles up and floats too. The soil decides how long water lingers around a pool: sand lets it through most easily, clay least of all.

Lowering the water with care

Merlin, a liner maker, tells owners not to take the water below 2 feet in the shallow end without the dealer's advice. A pool-supply retailer's guide also advises against draining while heavy rain keeps falling for days. On clay that holds water, we'll talk through the timing before the pump goes in.

What the refill water carries

Crystal Clear's 2025 report lists Edwards Aquifer wells, plus surface water and groundwater bought through the Canyon Regional Water Authority and the Alliance Regional Water Authority. The district also has an interconnect, a shared pipe link, with Springs Hill Special Utility District. The report gives no hardness figure. One state sample of treated water entering the district's system read 315 mg/L of total hardness on April 10, 2025.

For vinyl, the number to watch is pH. Merlin links high pH to scale forming on a liner, and low pH to the vinyl drying out and wrinkling as it loses its softeners.

Three one-teacher schools on Cottonwood Creek

Redwood lies on Cottonwood Creek and Farm Road 1978, seventeen miles north of Seguin in northern Guadalupe County. A post office ran there from 1895 to 1906, and in 1904 three one-teacher schools taught ninety-one students. By the 1950s those schools had become part of the San Marcos district.

Most of the growth came late. The state's history records give 400 people for both 1980 and 1990 and 3,586 for 2000. The 2020 Census counted 4,003 people and 1,215 homes. The Census Bureau's 2020–2024 survey dates the median home to 1991, with 31.2 percent built in the 1980s and 27.0 percent in the 1990s. That's the age of the houses, not of any pool.

Redwood is unincorporated, so its building rules are Guadalupe County's, and the county's floodplain permit names pools among the work that needs one in a flood zone.