Pool and Hot Tub Deck Installation

What’s a deck?

A deck is a flat, elevated surface outside, and is often connected to a house. The deck is made out of wood like lumber, cedar, other hardwoods, and composite (wood and plastic), aluminum, high-density polyethylene (plastic), or polystyrene (plastic). It can also be made of stone or other masonry, like concrete and brick.

Decks extend a home’s living areas into the yard. They’re a great place to sit down to dinner or on which to barbecue, but very often they are built around pools or hot tubs, either as a structure to support them, or a structure on which pools and hot tub recreation goes on.

What’s pool and hot tub deck installation?

Decks are generally built to take the same area as the pools or hot tubs they surround. This allows people enough space to safely and comfortably walk around the pool area. Decks are built from an assortment of materials, like metal, tile, brick and wood, or out of single materials, like a deck made only from wood.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the more popular deck materials.

Concrete: It can be textured with grooves to prevent slipping and falling on the wet surface. Other materials like wood and stone become very slippery with the water people dump on the deck as they get out of the pool, jump in, and splash at clothed passersby. It’s probably easy to laugh at these trouble-makers, but you wouldn’t want your feet to slip out from under you while you’re laughing. That would put an abrupt end to the joke, all right.

Concrete can also be tinted to complement a house’s exterior color, the hue of the surrounding greenery, or to resemble wood or more exotic and expensive deck surfaces like slate.

Wood: Depending on the deck surface color you want and on your budget, you can choose from hardwoods like cedar, or soft woods like pine. Other options with wood include composite materials, which are a mix of lumber and plastic.

Some hot tubs will need to be supported by the deck because they will not sit directly on the ground. Whether you’re building a deck to support and surround a hot tub, or a deck that will surround an existing pool or hot tub, it’ll be best to have the power of knowledge. That is, the knowledge of how a deck is built.

Here’s the basic configuration of a deck’s construction.

1. Footings. These are concrete pillars, piers, or blocks that will support the whole deck. They are sunken into the ground to provide support. They should rise about 6 inches from the ground soil.
2. Posts. These are the vertical supports attached to the footings. They form the basis for the deck’s frame. While the footings are concrete, the posts will be wood (if the deck is going to be wooden).
3. Stringers. They are horizontal beams that straddle the posts.
4. Joists. These are the horizontal beams that will support the deck’s surface. They run perpendicular to the stringers.
5. Decking. This is it, the surface. But it doesn’t have to end here. You could keep going by building a raised seating area on top of the deck, a short row of stands, like at a college running track.

Many builders will advocate a minimum deck area of 12 feet by 12 feet around the hot tub or pool. This makes it easiest to get into the pool, out of it, and to walk around and hang out on the premises. As detailed above, the builder may ask if you want to surround the edge of the deck with benches or raised seating.

Generally, you, the client, should go to your first consultation with the deck builder with a list of expectations and plans. That way the two parties can best work out a result that fits your initial plans and budget.