Concrete pool decks in Santa Clara CA - good grip for wet feet and water that drains away

Most people call when the old deck has cracked, chipped or settled away from the coping, or gone slick and dull, and some have a new pool that needs a deck for the first time. The price moves with the square footage, whether the old slab comes out or can be resurfaced, the finish you pick and how much drain work the deck needs. The schedule turns on tear-out, the permit question and the wait before the joint at the pool edge can be sealed. I look into permits while I put your estimate together, and the estimate is written out so you can see exactly what you're paying for before you decide.

On a pool deck I think about wet bare feet first, so we talk through grip and how warm a finish gets in the sun before we talk color. Next we settle where the water goes. The deck has to fall away from the house and toward or away from any deck drains without sending dirty runoff into the pool, so the drains, skimmer lines, pipes and movement joints get marked out before anything is formed. Then we dig out and pack the subgrade, the dirt and base the slab sits on, so the deck doesn't settle with the ground later. We leave a gap at the coping, the cap along the pool's rim, so the deck can move without pushing on it. While the concrete is still young we cut control joints, shallow lines that give cracks a planned place to run. Pour day runs like a dinner service, with the prep done before the truck shows up and the pour kept out of the hottest part of the afternoon, because a rushed top comes out weak and dusty. If the budget gets tight, I'd rather spend it on the base you'll never see than on a fancier finish, since a pretty surface on a poor base cracks just the same.

Pool decks usually connect to other work. If the deck steps down from a back door or between two levels, we plan those concrete steps with the deck so the heights and the water line up. If you want a pool house or equipment shed beside it, slab foundation building gives it a level base, and when a structure needs an engineer, we bring one in and work from their plans.

The City of Santa Clara requires a building permit to build or alter any structure. Its list names decks over 30 inches high but doesn't name pool decks, so for a deck at ground level that list doesn't settle whether you need one. I check with the city for your address while I put the estimate together, and you can ask the Santa Clara Permit Center yourself at 408-615-2420 or permitcenter@santaclaraca.gov. If you want new outlets near the deck, the city does require a building permit for new electrical circuits, outlets or receptacles, so plan that with your electrician. When we're the ones pulling a permit, we handle the paperwork and the inspections.

A lot of the pools we see here sit behind narrow side yards, so we plan how the old concrete comes out and the new concrete gets in before demo day, and we keep the pool and the plantings protected along the way. We run into the same tight backyards on pool deck jobs in Sunnyvale and Campbell.