AG deck ideas needed

[maryann79]

I posted this photo on another post, but I wanted to show it again for my deck question. Our pool was installed today, and neither I nor hubby thought of what is now obvious: why didn't we have the pump put on the back of the pool?
We are going to do a deck in the fall, so it's just a couple months, but we need to come up with a design idea. The idea is to take up the current patio, and make the new deck wider than this one. Since pump level is a bit too high for deck to smoothly go around at that point, that's where we have to get creative. (In this photo, the pump looks a bit lower than it is in real life.)

Also, if you put the deck all the way around, is there a way to construct it so that a portion of it is easier to remove if/when replacement of pool is needed? Or is it just better from that standpoint to not put deck all around? We will NOT be doing this ourselves, but we wanted to have a good idea of what is reasonable to dream up before we talk to someone about the project. Thanks!

 

[techguy]

I also have an older deck that is about 3 feet from the top rail of the pool. We made it this way so our daughter could not get into the pool without our help. This makes the majority of the deck only 12-18 inches above ground so we can get onto the pool deck from most anywhere in the yard and it did not require a rail around the deck. I liked the idea so we were not standing 4.5 feet in the air in the middle of our fenced in yard. The side closest to the existing concrete patio is about bench seat height above the concrete. Actually our pool is situated very much like your photo. Basically, the area from the BBQ to the pool is deck 18 inches high and it wraps to the left towards where your pump is. It goes to about where your second bird feeder is to the right behind the pool.

This is the best photo I have at this time of the scale of where the deck is in relation to the pool top. I have a 21 foot round, 52 inch wall. The pillar in the shot is on the concrete deck.

I recently added a top rail level deck. I used the 3 foot Splash Deck plans at DeckPlans.com but I only built two sections of this.
Here are the neighbors and my daughter on the deck. I have added a wooden ladder to replace the aluminum one.

PS... you can add piping and move your pump.

 

[BethyM]

Maryann: looking good, hope you are enjoying new pool! We are deck ponderers too.

Tech guy: love the lower deck idea.... let me ask, if you are sitting in a chair on the low part, can you see / supervise the kids in water? That's the biggest reason I want a deck, just not sure if the lower is an option.

 

[keithw]

If the filter is too high to allow you to deck over it level with the pool consider building a raised seating area box over the filter with a flip up lid. I did that on my old AGP for our AC unit and it worked great.

 

[dattia]

I had a 12x16 deck installed off one side of the pool last summer. I wanted it to be maintenance-free, but was the price was prohibitive. I went with gray colored composite decking, but wood for everything else to tame the costs a bit. This summer, I stained all the wood rails white and the steps gray to give me the look that I wanted. I love the deck... but if I had it to do all over again, I would have made it bigger.

I like the look of a deck walkway around the pool, but could never justify the added cost versus the usage for it, so I opted for the rectangle.

 

[techguy]

You can get a pretty good feel for what's going on while sitting on the deck but you can't see everything. I may be able to get a shot of that.

When you are sitting in a standard resin chair, you are obviously sitting below the waterline but the kids are mainly near the surface of the water and you can typically see their heads and with my DD everyone in the neighborhood/court can tell she is there based on the amount of noise she and her friends make. If you lean forward, you are putting your head to near the top edge height and you can see further. If you stand up, the top edge of the pool is just above your waistline and you can lean into the pool. I guess if I were concerned about seeing my DD and friends in the pool, I could sit on a bar stool and see the whole pool. Until this year, we typically had one adult in the water as my DD was not tall enough to easily stand and keep her head out of the water. She is now 9.5 years old and she can stand with her face out of water and easily swim. She is now self sufficient enough that we let her play in the pool with a friend or alone while I am getting ready to get in with her. We can see the pool from our kitchen and back slider, we do a head count and check if everyone is OK every 10 minutes os so. I normally limit them to 90 minutes in the pool and then I require them to get out and do something else for 30-60 minutes.

 

[techguy]

I added a thread that has a shot from a seated position on my deck. It is 38 inches from the deck to the top of the pool. I didn't want to threadjack your posting.

http://www.troublefreepool.com/my-deck-and-it-s-ever-increasing-scope-t49910.html

Here is the shot while sitting in a resin chair on the deck. I am 5 foot 10 inches tall.

 

[linda1]

We put a 3 foot splash deck around our 30 ft. pool. To solve the problem of the pump and filter being in the way, we hard plumbed everything and moved it 20 feet to the back of our garage. We put the splash deck even with the top rails with a large enough space if we ever need to remove the liner. I don't know of an easy way to build it that you could remove the entire pool without dismantling the deck. I love having the deck around the pool. Makes it so much easier to remove solar cover and to vacuum. But, I wish we would have put more thought into it. It would have worked better for us to enlarge the splash deck on the side of the house. This year we are adding on but at ground level with steps up to the splash desk. Also adding railings to the splash deck.

Connecting old deck 16x30 to splash deck.

Taking it to the drive and garage

 

[1john]

Linda, did you use deck blocks for your ground level deck? If so, how did they hold up over winter. Thank you,

 

[linda1]

We used the deck blocks for the splash deck around the pool, and for the lower deck we used solid cement blocks that we leveled. We were very happy with how everything held up over the winter.