Cobra’s Pool Deck Restoration
Pools and pool decks are a fantastic place to spend the spring and summer months! Proper maintenance can make sure these pool decks are safe and beautiful for decades. Negligence of these surfaces can lead to costly repairs to get them back up to a maintainable condition. Many home owners, HOA facilities, apartment communities, hotels, and municipalities trust Cobra Deck and Concrete to help maintain these fun environments. In the following paragraphs, we will be discussing the different types of pool decks and options for beautifying and protecting these surfaces. Some of these options include temperature reduction coatings that reduce the temperature of the actual surface! All of our coatings come with options to incorporate slip resistance into the surface coatings.
Concrete Pool Decks
Plain concrete as a pool deck is boring and ugly. Many options exist for these types of decks that create a very attractive surface, make it easy to clean, lengthen the time between power washing, and temperature reducing systems. Regardless, Cobra Deck and Concrete HIGHLY recommends one of these options to protect that expensive concrete pool deck surface.
- Clear / invisible sealer – this sealer does not have any color and is invisible, but is an entry level pool deck sealer that will provide some protection from freeze / thaw cycles, mold, mildew, and organic gowth, and some spills and stain protection. These systems can be installed in very little time and are fairly inexpensive.
- Concrete stains – these sealers, when used with a clear top coat urethane, can add color to the surface and protect it at the same time. These are only recommended for pool deck surfaces that are fairly new and that do not have any damage or heavy staining. These project can be a uniform single color or multiple colors can be incorporated in the surface. Grip for slip resistance can be incorporated into this system, but will not have the temperature reduction feature.
- Color toned coating – This is the most popular system and gives you the most versatility and most “bang for your buck”. These coatings can be any color you can imagine, can be color matched, and can have multiple colors incorporated on different areas of the pool deck (i.e. One color for the coping around the pool and one color for the rest of the larger portion of the pool deck). This coating covers up unsightly color differences in the concrete, hides stains, and makes the surface very uniform no matter what the surface looks like. These coatings are thin, so it will not cover completely wide cracks (tiny ones it will cover), spalling, or other textural features of the surface. The entire pool deck will be very uniform in the colors selected. The biggest selling feature of this particular coating is that it REDUCES the temperature 15 DEGREES from what the temperature was on the existing surface. This means your pets and children will have an easier time walking across the surfaces or sitting on the edge of the pool without burning their feet or back ends. There is a noticeable difference between this coating versus what they experienced when the surface was bare concrete.
- Textured coatings – This is the Cadillac of coatings. Think of this coating as the same exact product as the color toned sealer, but it is thicker with a built in texture. This product is perfect for older pool decks that have lots of wear, exposed aggregate inside the concrete or cracks that need to be covered up. This coating is far less expensive than the cost to resurface with overlays, micro-toppings, or any other cementitious coating. It also has the built in temperature reduction feature, which other concrete / cement based systems will not have. These coatings are widely used not only by our residential customers, but we have used this coating for high traffic situations like apartment complex pools, hotel pools, centralized HOA pools, and municipality areas. This coating is the most durable and longest lasting surface and has been used widely at NASA facilities all over Florida!
Paver / Hardscape Pool Decks
Cobra Deck and Concrete fixes and maintains hundreds of paver and hardscapes surfaces every year, including pool decks. Click on that link for more information on paver and hardscapes pool decks.
Travertine Pool Decks
Travertine is a fantastic material to use as a pool deck surface due to its natural ability to not hold the heat and to be a cooler surface to walk on in bare feet. However, because it is a natural stone, it is susceptible to erosional and wear over time. A clear sealer on these types of surfaces will greatly reduce the erosional effects of acid rain and power washing. Plus, the need to power wash the surface will not be as often because sealing these surfaces will keep the surface cleaner longer. I can easily tell a new travertine surface over an old surface. The old surface will have much more wear, more “holes and divots” and be much more rough. Sealing travertine periodically will greatly increase the life of the surface by more that 4 times! Preparing the travertine surface, installing sand in the gaps (if needed) and coating with an enhancement sealer with grit is very inexpensive when compared to paver sealing or concrete coatings. Most of our customers are presently surprised when we present a cost for the surface, especially if it is a new installation.
Flagstone / Slate / Granite Pool Decks
Most of these types of materials are used in conjunction with mortar joints. These joints and very hard and is the best joint (over polymeric sand) that is on the market for pool decks. As with travertine, these surfaces can erode over time. Slate and granite are super hard rock and really do not degrade much at all. The biggest issue with these types of systems is the freeze thaw cycles on the MORTAR joints. Because these joints are typically lower in elevation than the top surface of the slate or flagstone, they tend to collect water and water will pool in these low areas. In the winter, the water that sits in the mortar joints will freeze and start to wear at these joints. Over many years of this cycle continuing, it will create cracks, broken chunks, and other debris breaking loose from between the stones. Once this happens, the stones become loose and more water will be able to infiltrate under the surface and start heaving more of the rock, which creates more cracks and damage. All of this can be prevented with a simple coat of sealer being placed on the surface every 2 to 3 years. Sealers will protect the top surface of the rock from erosional effects and will protect the mortar joint from freeze / thaw damage. To prepare this surface and put an enhancing clear coating on these surfaces is very inexpensive when compared to the coatings on concrete. Most of our customers are pleasantly surprised with the cost to perform this work on any type of natural stone pool decking.
