The RTR Group, Inc. manufactures one-piece Trilogy Pools at their plant located in Fayetteville, Tennessee.
The plant was entirely renovated in the first quarter of 2000 to meet the growing needs of the fiberglass pool industry.
Our company uses only the finest raw materials: NPG-ISO gel coats, vinyl ester resin, marine grade general-purpose (GP) resins, and top of the line glass gun roving and woven roving.
Our quality control system ensures that your pool will be durable and beautiful.
We can tell you the day your pool was built, the shop conditions, the glass technicians, the lot and batch numbers of your resin, and even retain a piece of your pool in our files.
Let’s take a look at the actual manufacturing process and you will see why our composite product is an industry leader.
It all starts with quality molds...
Quality pools begin with quality molds.
Unlike most "molds" you are familiar with, we build a pool on the outside of the mold, not the inside.
Think of it as the reverse mold for Jell-O or cake.
We are building the "pan" not the Jell-O inside.
The mold is just a mirror image of the pool.
Any scratch or imperfection in the mold is transferred to the surface of your pool.
It is for this reason that our mold technicians go over each and every inch of our mold before the building process begins.
When a significant imperfection appears, the mold is taken off-line to be reworked by our mold shop technicians.
Next, the mold is cleaned of any surface dust and contamination before the gel coat is applied.
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Gel Coat Application
The first step is to spray the mold with the gel coat.
Our operators strive for the perfect wet thickness of 28 mils.
This is put down in three passes to give your pool an even appearance.
Gel coat thickness is important: too thick and it will crack, too thin and the surface will be soft and not as durable.
Our operators must gauge their gel coat in over 20 distinct locations, and and each measurement is documented as part of the quality report.
In the case of our Safas Ultra Granicoat® finish, a 40 mil layer of Granicoat is backed by 15 mils of gelcoat.
It is this extra thickness along with the patented coloring additives that give Ultra Granicoat pools an extremely durable, yet fashionable, solid surface finish.
Vinyl Ester Skin
Once the gel coat has cured, the next layer, the vinyl ester resin, is applied.
Many pool manufactures skip this step, as vinyl ester resin is more expensive than other resins used in the industry.
The vinyl ester barrier is crucial to providing a water and blister barrier for your pool.
We know that all of the top line boat manufacturers would never dream of leaving this step out and neither do we.
We put 100 mils of vinyl ester skin down along with chopped glass.
All of the air is rolled out of the chopped glass/vinyl ester, leaving a thick vinyl ester coat around your entire pool.
The RTR Group never use any fillers with our resin.
Fillers are materials that are mixed with the resin in order to make it last longer.
This is similar to watering down paint before painting your house and it is just as bad of an idea.
One manufacturer even uses a filled resin, which was designed to enhance cosmetic properties of the laminate and actually markets it as a strength enhancement.
We just don’t believe in "filling" our advertising with fluff and we have the scientific staff to back up our claims.
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Wrapping it up...
Our final step is to apply the 24-ounce glass woven roving.
This cloth like material is like a shield of armor around your entire pool.
It is installed with the same marine grade GP resin as used in the previous layer.
In any areas that our staff have determined to be "high-stress" areas, we also put a second layer of glass along with a sandwiched core material.
By separating two layers of glass by a core, you significantly enhance the strength of the composite structure.
In fact, when you double the thickness of this core you increase the strength by 8 times!
This engineered in strength makes our pools much easier to install for our dealers and do-it-yourselfer.
The Final Step
Once your pool is pulled from the mold, our technicians inspect it for any defects.
If there are any areas that need attention the pool is sent to our repair technicians for service.
One of best properties of working with fiberglass is the ability to repair it.
Even if one were to cut a hole in your pool with a saw, it can be seamlessly repaired, to stronger than original condition; there is no way to do that with a vinyl liner or concrete pool.
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