This is the first post I write in this forum, but lately I read enough because of the recent acquisition of a house with pool. It turns out that when you bought the house there was a huge pool built and abandoned for over 4 years.
I managed to empty it from the mud in the background and I have cleaned, changed the pump and filter (there were) and the plumber who came to put the pump and the filter told me I should grout because the gaskets were damaged.
After reading several post on how to clean the joints for subsequent grouting, I gathered a gang of friends, several spatulas, 1 Karcher and many liters of hydrochloric acid. We started through the walls, throwing hydrochloric acid directly into the walls, which started to make bubbles and dripping to the ground. After a few minutes, we clarified and began to scratch... A hell, it costs a horror to remove the old grout, and I do not know what is grout or tail of the gresites. The advance is tremendously slow, for you to get an idea, I only in 4 hours I advance 1 meter x 1.60 of Promolta (the part that covers less, I do not want to think when we get to the bottom). After repeating the operation of throwing hydrochloric acid several times, I realize that the walls are still very difficult to scratch but the ground is being done practically only since the whole product dripped and stays on the ground, doing all its action on the ground , and very little on the walls. I've come to let the Slfuman act 15 minutes to see if so and there is no way. The walls were not so damaged, the worst was the ground, but now that I have already cast salfuman all I guess they will be quite weakened and I prefer to do them all.
I don't want to join the new product until I have the pool with the clean gaskets, but at this rate I don't end up in 3 months scratching. Can you tell me a way to get the grout out of the walls?
In all the sites I have read that in order for the grout product to grip well, a depth of 2 mm is required. In my pool 2mm is to remove the tail between the joints, as the tile is placed one by one. Do I need to remove that tail?
For the grouting I will use Sika Ceram SmallGrout and instead of water I will mix with Sika Ceram LatexGrout. What think? I have read that recommend Sika Ceraam 225, but in several hardware stores that I have asked and even the commercial of Sika, I have advised the SmallGrout, since the 225 is to glue and not to grout.
To summarize my questions are:
1-How can I remove the old "grout" from the pool walls without dying in the attempt?
2-To what extent should the grout be removed? Let the joints remain hollow, just the tail...
3-What opinion do you have about Sika Ceram SmallGrout + Sika Ceram LatexGrout?
4-If you put the new grout on top of the joints that have passed hydrochloric acid and are somewhat softened, would it be very problematic for product adhesion?
If you need a little more info, I'm at your disposal.
Thank you very much for all the information you can provide.
Greetings.