A hailstorm that leaves your car pockmarked usually leaves your fibreglass pool with something more serious than a few white dots. Marbelite chips under a direct hit and can often be patched with a fresh skim coat. Fibreglass pool hail damage shows up differently — spider-cracking in the gelcoat, sometimes fracture lines that reach the laminate underneath. Kempton Park sits square in the East Rand’s summer hail belt, and pools with an ageing finish or no cover take the brunt of it every season.
What hail actually does to a fibreglass shell
The gelcoat on a fibreglass pool is a thin resin skin sitting over a structural laminate layer. It flexes with the shell under normal use, but hail doesn’t apply pressure evenly the way a footstep or water load does. A stone travelling at speed delivers a sharp, localised shock to one small point. That’s a very different kind of stress to the slow wear a pool surface usually deals with, and it’s why hail cracks look and behave differently from age cracks.
Surface pitting and dulling
Smaller hail often just dulls and pits the gelcoat without threatening the structure underneath. It looks cosmetic and, in isolation, it is. But rough, pitted gelcoat holds algae and stains far more readily than a smooth finish, so it doesn’t stay a cosmetic problem for long if it’s left alone.
Star cracks and hairline fractures
Bigger stones, or a direct hit on an older or thinner section of gelcoat, tend to leave star-shaped cracks radiating from the impact point. Some are gelcoat-only. Others run straight into the laminate. You can’t always tell which from a glance — a gentle tap test around the crack, feeling for give or a hollow sound, tells you more than the eye does.
When impact triggers delamination
The trickiest damage doesn’t show immediately. A hard impact can loosen the bond between gelcoat and laminate without cracking the surface at all. Water works into that gap over the following weeks, and a soft, slightly raised patch appears well after the storm has passed. This is why a pool that looks fine the day after hail can still need attention a month later.
Why Kempton Park pools take a harder hit
The East Rand gets hit by hail most Highveld summers, and Kempton Park’s mix of established suburbs and newer estate developments means a lot of pools sit fully exposed, without trees, overhangs or permanent covers to break the impact. Older pools due for a resurface are especially at risk — gelcoat that’s already chalky and UV-worn is more brittle, and brittle gelcoat cracks at a lower impact than a fresh, flexible one.
Assessing the damage before you touch anything
The instinct after a storm is to grab a tub of pool filler and close up the obvious marks. Resist it. Filling a crack that runs into the laminate with a cosmetic patch just traps moisture behind a surface that looks fine and fails again within a season.
| Damage sign | What it usually means | Safe to keep swimming? | Typical repair |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dull, gritty patches, no visible crack | Surface pitting in the gelcoat | Yes, in the short term | Buff back and recoat |
| Fine white spidering around an impact point | Star crack — gelcoat, possibly into laminate | Only after inspection | Grind back, resin and matting where needed, fresh gelcoat |
| A soft, slightly raised patch weeks after the storm | Delamination starting from a hidden impact | No | Cut out, rebuild laminate, new gelcoat |
| Water level dropping faster than evaporation explains | A crack reaching through the shell | No | Full crack repair, then a leak test before refill |
The delayed cases matter most. If a pool looked untouched the morning after a storm, it’s worth a follow-up check a few weeks later, particularly around any spot where you noticed a stone land hard at the time.
Getting a fibreglass pool hail damage repair right
Hail rarely leaves one weak spot. A bad storm dents a shell in a dozen places at once, scattered across the whole surface rather than concentrated in one worn section like ordinary ageing damage. That changes how the repair has to be approached.
- Drain the pool and mark every impact point, not just the obvious ones
- Tap-test around each mark to find soft spots that aren’t visibly cracked yet
- Grind back to sound laminate at every site
- Rebuild structural cracks with chopped-strand matting and resin, not a skim patch
- Recoat with a fresh, UV-stable gelcoat, colour-matched where it’s a spot repair
- Cure, refill, and rebalance the water
The mapping step at the start is what separates a repair that lasts from one that reopens at the next storm. Skip it, fix the two cracks you can see, and the third one — the one that only shows a hairline now — turns into a blister in a year. A full recoat after a bad storm usually takes three to five days once work starts, though a heavily scarred surface or an awkward pool shape can push that out.
Insurance, guarantees, and what counts as an “act of nature”
Workmanship guarantees on resurfacing and refibreglassing cover the quality of the installation — they don’t extend to damage caused by weather. Hail is a natural event, not a defect in the work, so it sits outside normal guarantee terms in the same way storm damage sits outside most product warranties generally. That’s standard, and it’s exactly why household insurance, not the pool guarantee, is the right route for hail claims.
Photograph every mark before any repair work starts — insurers want to see the damage as the storm left it, not after grinding has begun. Book an inspection quickly too. We typically get back to homeowners the same day, or the next if storm calls are stacking up across the area, and the sooner a crack is assessed, the less time water has to work its way in and turn a gelcoat repair into a laminate one.
Preventing repeat damage before the next storm season
Covers and nets as the first line of defence
A solid or mesh cover absorbs a good deal of the impact energy before it ever reaches the gelcoat. It won’t stop a genuinely large hailstone, but it changes the odds on an average storm considerably. Just make sure it’s properly secured — a cover flapping loose in high wind does its own damage, dragging grit across the surface it’s meant to protect.
Positioning and hard landscaping
New builds have more room to plan around this than existing pools do. A pergola or overhang along one edge shields part of the surface without blocking the view or the swim. It’s a partial measure, not a solution — no reasonable structure covers an entire pool — but it reduces exposure on the section most likely to catch a storm coming from a particular direction.
Gelcoat spec and timing
A well-maintained, properly cured gelcoat resists impact better than one that’s already chalky from years of UV exposure. Sun-damaged gelcoat is more brittle, and brittle gelcoat cracks at a lower impact than fresh material does. Resurfacing an ageing fibreglass pool before it degrades further is, in a roundabout way, a form of hail prevention — you’re not stopping the storm, but you’re giving the surface a better chance when it hits. For more on how the two finishes behave differently under stress, this comparison of finish behaviour is worth a read, as is this breakdown of flexibility and impact response across finish types.
What to do in the 48 hours after a hailstorm
- Walk the full edge of the pool — don’t just glance at it from indoors
- Photograph every visible mark before touching anything
- Check the water level against the tile line the next morning
- Leave damaged sections alone rather than brushing or vacuuming over them
- Book an inspection before refilling or adjusting chemicals if the level looks off
- Keep any cover on until the inspection is done, even once the storm has passed
Frequently asked questions
Will hail damage void my fibreglass pool’s guarantee?
No, but it also isn’t covered by the guarantee itself. Workmanship cover applies to installation defects, not weather events, which is standard across the pool industry. Insurance is the correct route for storm damage.
Can hail crack a fibreglass shell right through?
It can, though a full-thickness fracture is less common than surface and gelcoat-level cracking. Older, sun-worn gelcoat is more vulnerable to a crack reaching the laminate than a well-maintained surface.
How soon should I get the pool inspected after a storm?
As soon as you reasonably can. Some hail damage, particularly delamination, doesn’t show for weeks, so an early inspection catches the obvious marks and gives you a baseline to check against later.
Does household insurance cover hail damage to a pool?
Usually yes, though policies vary on pool-specific cover. Check your policy, and photograph the damage before any repair work begins so you’ve got evidence for the claim.
Can I patch a hail crack myself?
Cosmetic pitting can wait a few days without harm. Anything that looks like a structural crack shouldn’t be filled with a generic pool putty — it needs resin and matting, and doing it properly means grinding back to sound material first, which isn’t a weekend fix.
Not sure if it's cosmetic or structural?
A tap test only tells you so much — an on-site look at the crack pattern tells us whether you need a gelcoat patch or a fuller refinishing job. Get a quote or email us the details and photos for a non-binding assessment.