Cool deck vs grass

[OlguitaB]

Can someone tell me what is the main purpose of building a cool deck (of any material) around pool? I don't want any more hard surfaces in my backyard! 99% of our patio is already cemented. My husband is telling me that we must have a deck to protect the pool' foundation from rain water, etc., he says that the coping alone won't sufice. Is this true? I always tought the deck was just for walking and decoration.

 

[Davejavu]

It depends on your pool construction. Gunite is a concrete shell that is self supporting concrete. Not much deck needed there. Fiberglass need a concrete collar to hold the pool in the ground when it's empty (it'll float like a boat). For IG vinyl, the pool walls need a small concrete collar (maybe 1 or 2 feet) to help stabilize the walls. Curved walls may need a little less than a long straight wall. We did not want a huge deck because we want our free form pool to resemble a country pond. So we are only doing 24 inches of concrete that will be topped with tumbled blue stone. Then we are using Synlawn artificial turf to give us "grass" that will not make the pool dirty with grass clippings. A random search of the Googles came up with a few examples of grass pool decks: Grass Pool Decks

For drainage, you can always add some drain tile to get the water away from the pool.

 

[gwegan]

Gunite pools do not require any deck. Keeping water away from the pool is not generally an issue with a gunite pool.

Even though you don't have a deck you want some sort of bonding grid surrounding your pool

 

[triptyx]

How much grass and other debris do you want in your pool on a regular basis? If you don't have kids or dogs, probably not an issue. But part of the attraction of hardscape around the edges of the pool is to avoid people/dogs tracking all kinds of dirt, grass clippings, leaves, etc. into the pool every time they get out/in. Add any kind of heavier traffic (kids, dogs) and now you get to add mud to your water as well. Finally, a strip of hardscape will assist with not having longer grass trying to grow into the pool. Might mean you need to edge less.

 

[Flbeachluvr]

How much grass and other debris do you want in your pool on a regular basis? If you don't have kids or dogs, probably not an issue. But part of the attraction of hardscape around the edges of the pool is to avoid people/dogs tracking all kinds of dirt, grass clippings, leaves, etc. into the pool every time they get out/in. Add any kind of heavier traffic (kids, dogs) and now you get to add mud to your water as well. Finally, a strip of hardscape will assist with not having longer grass trying to grow into the pool. Might mean you need to edge less.

We only have three feet of cement decking around part of our pool and then grass after that. When it's just my husband and me swimming we don't get a lot of grass in the pool but we had a party this weekend with a lot of people walking on the grass and then going into the pool. The next morning I had quite a bit of grass in the pool. My skimmer caught the floating stuff and I just brushed the stuff on the bottom into the drains. A bit messy but not a big deal. Now if I had a bunch of kids over all the time I might have chosen to have more decking.

 

[triptyx]

To be fair - I only have about three feet around the back and sides of my pool as well - but that's still a good amount of room for kids/people to walk around the pool. The OP is talking about just having a coping, which wouldn't be wide enough to really walk normally on, hence my reasoning above.

 

[Bluelilly]

We have about 2' of rock coping around our pool as we didn't want that much hardscape in small back yard area. When my husband mows, I just make sure that I have the pump set for skimming, dump skimmers and all is good. We do use a grass catcher for the yard, though. We have had pool parties and it wasn't an issue. We have more problems with wind dumping pollen & leaves in pool. It works for us.