Coping replacement advice please

joboxxer · Sep 10, 2015

I found a deal on these 14" (cast concrete) bullnose pavers. My existing pool was lipstick repaired by the previous owner(flipper). He put acrylic overlay on what appears to be aggregate coping. 3 years later it is starting to crack up. It's only 9". I don't know if I should cut the deck back ( curved corners) or cut the pavers shorter. He also put the overlay on the deck. It would have been ok but it's busting in all the concrete seams underneath. I will address that later. I will probably learn more when I tear out the coping but I think it's pretty thick near the pool to match the thick overlay on the coping. The deck seems to slope away from the pool a lot. Advice on mortar would be appreciate.

Texas Splash · Sep 11, 2015

The following are some simple notes I found about your question on replacing the coping:
The use of regular mortar should work for both the tile and the coping. The use of TypeS mortar with a bonding agent is often recommended. Chisel or cut the existing mortar out. Wet the stone and the bond beam before applying the mortar, or the stone and bond beam may suck the water out of the mortar and you won't get a good bond. During your project, you can expect a lot of dirt going into the pool, but you could use some various methods to avoid letting too much junk to get in the pool. You could consider floating something with a tarp or plastic around where you work, or creating a type of screen barrier. Inevitably you'll still get pieces in the pool that you'll have to clean up. After the coping and mortar has set, grout the seem as required.

joboxxer · Sep 13, 2015

So I would just mortar the bricks down but use grout between?or which seam do you mean

Texas Splash · Sep 13, 2015

You sure can. There are also a lot of such articles on the forum you could read and compare to your situation by just entering the word "grout" in the search feature from the home page. Hope that helps you. Have a great day.

duraleigh · Sep 13, 2015

From that pic, it looks like the substrate underneath the pavers has some voids......is that correct?

If so, that will be your first job. Fill the voids and have a good, solid underlayment to set the pavers.

Have you laid tile or pavers before?

joboxxer · Sep 13, 2015

What you see is the old aggregate coping with overlay breaking off. I have done tile and pavers but never pool coping. If I use mortar it seems I would lay the pavers on the cleaned off bond beam on mortar. And use mortar between like laying blocks. Or is the mortar not good with saltwater?

joboxxer · Sep 16, 2015

How can I figure how much mortar to buy? I have about 120 feet of coping

MARCO...polo · Sep 16, 2015

Texas Splash said:
........ During your project, you can expect a lot of dirt going into the pool, but you could use some various methods to avoid letting too much junk to get in the pool. You could consider floating something with a tarp or plastic around where you work, or creating a type of screen barrier. Inevitably you'll still get pieces in the pool that you'll have to clean up. After the coping and mortar has set, grout the seem as required.

When I sealed the raised wall on the back side of my pool I draped a piece of thick mil visqueen (plastic sheeting) across a couple of foam noodles that I had passed a piece of copper tubing (bendable) through. I bent the noodles to the curvbature of the pool wall and held the noodles apart (stretching the tarp out flat to catch drops and spills) with 1/2" PVC pipe and duct tape. I thought I had a pic of this contraption but alas it has gone missing. It work really well.