'Concrete cancer' ruining pools for hundreds of Central Texans

Neeley Ramey first noticed the cracks in her then-4-year-old pool in 2021 and thought they were a result of the deadly freeze that winter in Central Texas. But the fissures kept spreading for months.

Now she knows what hundreds of other swimming pool owners in Central Texas counties have unfortunately discovered: Her pool has "concrete cancer" and has to be demolished because of a defect in its building materials.

"Now I get quoted $150,000 to $170,000 just to rip the concrete out, " said Ramey, who lives in Southwest Austin and paid $60,000 for her pool. She said her pool builder told her he couldn't help her because the problem caused him to go broke.

"I'm just sick over it," Ramey said.

She is now part of a multidistrict litigation lawsuit originally filed in 2021 in Travis County that includes more than 120 plaintiffs, she said. Multidistrict litigation combines multiple civil cases involving one or more common questions but pending in different districts.

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These cases point to concrete being the issue with failing pools.

Concrete is made by mixing sand, cement and water. Concrete cancer, formally known as alkali-silica reaction, or ASR, causes concrete to swell internally and to crack when it comes in contact with water. It happens when there's a chemical reaction between alkalis in the cement and certain types of silica in the aggregates , or sand.

The problem has affected Central Texas property owners who had pools installed between 2017 and 2022, according to law firms and pool builders.

The way to prevent ASR is to add fly ash , a byproduct of burning coal, to the mix before the concrete is poured, officials said.

There has been a shortage of fly ash in recent years, people involved in the pool industry said. John Ford, who owns his own pool company, Front2back Custom, and other builders blamed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations for reducing the number of coal-burning plants, and said the problem was made worse during the COVID-19 pandemic when demand for pools boomed.

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Austin attorney Michael Lovins said he is representing about 18 pool owners from Travis, Hays and Williamson counties in the multidistrict litigation lawsuit. It was not clear from the litigation whether pool owners from other Central Texas counties are included in the lawsuit.

"I'm not ready to say why it's a Central Texas problem because I'm still trying to figure it out," Lovins said. "The basic theory of the case is that the standard of care, meaning what a responsible company does that supplies aggregates, is to test the pH balance and that tells you if you need to add fly ash. I think at every step in the supply chain, the people in charge chose not to do a batch test of the pH balance."

Lovins said he has sued pool builders and cement providers for his clients.

"I have a few pools where I know the company is still in business but quite a few pools where the pool builder is out of business," he said. "I believe that ASR is a major factor for pool builders going out of business."

Mike Church, the president of Cody Pools, said pool builders at the time didn't know there was no fly ash in the concrete they received.

"None of us knew it was being cut," he said.

Cody Pools is not one of the defendants in the multidistrict litigation lawsuit.

Church said his theory, based on research by engineers, is that three to four quarries in the Bastrop area provided the sand and rocks that reacted with cement to cause ASR. He said the issue also involved three providers of shotcrete, which is concrete that is sprayed at a high velocity through a hose. A small number of Cody Pools were affected by ASR and the company has set up a response team to support affected customers and canceled contracts with the shotcrete providers involved in the cancer concrete issue, Church said.

The defendants in the multidistrict litigation that provided materials include Bastrop Sand Supply, Easy Mix Concrete Services, Travis Materials Group and Texas Lehigh Cement Co. None of their representatives or lawyers replied to a request for comment.

Easy Mix said in a court document that it was not responsible for any defects in pools because it purchased all its materials from Travis Materials and Texas Lehigh Cement Co.

Travis Materials and Texas Lehigh Cement Co. both said in cross-claims filed against Easy Mix that the material they provided to the concrete company was not defective.

"If any defect exists in the concrete formulated and manufactured by Easy Mix, the defect resulted from Easy Mix's faulty design and manufacture of the concrete," their claims said.

Part of the problem , Ford said, is that Texas pool builders are not required to be licensed. "It's the wild, wild West out there," he said. "Anyone can be a pool builder."

He said the only way to diagnose if a pool has ASR is to drill a core sample from the pool and take that to a lab to be analyzed. He said he has been providing the service for three years for $4,500.

There is no fix for ASR, and pools have to be demolished, Ford said.

"A lot of people want to put a Band-Aid on the outside of the pool, but what they don't understand is the pool isn't cracking from the outside in," he said. "ASR is forming capillaries on the inside, and those capillaries start deteriorating on the inside of the pool."

Lakeway resident AJ Miller said he started a Facebook page for pool owners with ASR after his pool was ruined by the problem. "My backyard went from my oasis to my hellhole," he said.

Miller said he estimates, based on responses to his Facebook page, that there are at least 1,000 Central Texas pool owners whose pools have ASR.

His advice to people who think they have ASR problems is to contact their pool builder, find out who the concrete maker was and what date the concrete was poured, Miller said. People interested in building pools should make sure their builders understand what ASR is, he said. Potential pool owners should ask to see a report of what is in the concrete mix, called the batch report, before the concrete is poured, Miller said.

Leander resident Sachin Patel said that when he first noticed cracks on the surface of his pool in early 2021, he wasn't concerned but started to worry later in the year when cracks appeared on the outside of the aboveground structure.

His pool builder "kind of acknowledged" the pool had ASR in 2022, but the builder's insurance company said it didn't cover it, Patel said. He said he learned about ASR from Miller's Facebook page. Patel said his lawyers recently told him that he probably couldn't recover any money for his pool because the builder and the concrete supplier have gone bankrupt.

"I spent $73,000 in 2020 to build the pool and it has a spa," said Patel. "I think the same pool will cost $125,000 to $130,000 because of inflation."

He said he and his children are trying to make it through the summer by still using the pool that is leaking about half an inch of water per day.

Former Cedar Park Mayor Corbin Van Arsdale filed a lawsuit in July against pool builder Precision Watershapes and Easy Mix claiming that his pool was ruined by defects including ASR. Van Arsdale did not respond to a request for comment.

Precision Watershapes has not yet filed a response to Van Arsdale's lawsuit.

The company also was sued by several people in the multidistrict litigation lawsuit. Precision Watershapes said in response to one of those lawsuits that it was not responsible for the defects in the pool, according to a third-party petition. The defects were due to negligence by a concrete subcontractor, the petition said.

ASR is a huge financial stress for pool owners, said Lovins , the attorney.

Pool owners paid an average of $125,000 for a pool during the pandemic, but the cost to demolish it and rebuild is now about 2½ times more, he said.

"That's a ton of money unless you are Elon Musk," Lovins said. "People built these because it was sort of an escape and an oasis for family and kids, and now instead of having a place to laugh and play and have a good time, they have an empty hole in the ground they have to put a yellow fence around."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: 'Concrete cancer' ruining pools for hundreds of Central Texans