Below is a link to help understand the type of cover I'm referring too. Anti entrapment covers are a must for older pools with a single main drain... Cindy what part of Tennessee are you in? Sometime's when liners are replaced the floor needs to be redone Rather than patching spots as in included in most liner replacements. If a area is bad most liners will let you lift the liner for up to 3yrs and patch spots with out worrying about wrinkles in the liner. Our good old red clay dirt here in Tennessee along with underground water is known for rocks to show up and most companys are willing to fix them during the warranty period of the workmanship. Here is a link that might be useful: Drain Cover

Padding the floor would cause the liner to move from people jumping and twisting. Laying flat on the pool floor is best since it stays put. What is in place for coping now? If the liner is more than a year old, if you changed the coping, the liner would go too. Liners don't like being dry after being exposed to water. The plasticizers loose elasticity. The liner will want to return to it's original size and not be able to be restretched properly, resulting in reduced life, wrinkles, stretch marks, etc,,,. The older the liner, the greater the chance of a tear too. WRT to the material the coping and track are made of, metal or plastic work. Typically its aluminum and plastic. Scott

Thanks for the followups. We are not the original owners and bought this house with a pool so we're definitely learning. Before the new liner install, The bottom had sand (and maybe something else) and it was really really smooth. The PB was to install Pool Krete and now it's very lumpy and "gravelly" under our feet when we step in many areas, especially at the top of the deep end where we can inch along the wall with our feet. We had a crew out this morning and they swam, took a wooden board and a rubber mallet and hammered at the bottom. They said they got as many spots as the could find. They admitted that it was left with a lot of crud under the liner and that it wasn't left "clean". I said "it wasn't your best crew, was it?" and he said "no, it wasn't". So, on our quote is DEFINITELY Pool Krete. But i understand you have to trowel that when you install, right? I don't want to take any drastic measures with the company if this is just what we should expect from an install . . . but if this is not normal, i will get quotes from other companies and ask to be refunded so we can do it all over again with a better crew and materials. As to the number of inches against the wall, it ranges from 0" in spots up to 3" in others. You can see where the seam should be against the wall, but it's not. Maybe a bad measure, maybe bad manufacture, maybe bad install? All i know is that the old liner was smooth, and snug. It feels like our pool "improvement" is more like a 4k downgrade . . . All i'm really just trying to do is to get a balanced opinion because I'm overly emotional about how bad this has all gone and i don't want to raise hell if this is normal. Thanks everyone.

The liner was pulled out and the PB's lone worker began the task of hitting the rip rap with a pick axe. Mistake number 1, because we are changing the level of the swimming pool and turning it into a 52" water line all the way across, the PB instructed the worker to shovel the rip rap (just dirt and slight sprinkling of cement powder)into the deep end. Then the sand from the shallow end was raked and shoveled down to the deep end on top of the chunks of riprap.