A pool deck that keeps its grip when the whole family is wet
Most pool decks in Blandon were poured with the house, and the concrete under them is usually in good shape. What wears is the surface, especially along the joints and the splash band beside the water. We coat it for bare feet and do the work outside the weeks you want to swim.
Joints first, because that is where a deck gives way
A backyard pool in Maidencreek Township usually arrived with the house or a few summers after it, and the deck around it went down on the same kind of modern, flat concrete as the garage. That is good news for you. On a Blandon deck the slab itself is rarely what fails. The joints are.
Every saw cut and every seam between two pours exists so the concrete can move as the seasons change. Coat straight across one and the coating has to move with it, which it will not do for long. It splits along the line, water finds its way underneath, and by the following spring the edge has started to lift.
So the joints stay joints. We grind and build the coating up to each side, then close the gap with a flexible sealant that can open and shut through a Berks winter without dragging the floor along with it. On the finished deck they show as thin lines running across the flake, and that is exactly how they ought to look. Small cracks are another story: those get cut out, filled and leveled before any base coat goes down.
Getting a crew and a grinder into a fenced backyard
A pool deck sits behind a fence for good reasons, and that fence is one of the first things we look at on the walkthrough. Diamond grinders, dust extraction, pails of base and boxes of flake all have to travel from the truck in your driveway to the deck, usually through a side gate and across the lawn. If the gate is tight or the route has steps in it, we want to know before the first morning, while there is still time to plan around it.
Jimmy and Justyn do this work themselves, together with the crew, so the man measuring your gate is the same man carrying a grinder through it. He is also the one who answers when you have a question halfway through day one.
Nothing about the pool itself has to change. It stays full. Extraction runs on every grinder for the whole job, which keeps the dust down around the water and off your patio furniture.
Cobra Epoxy and Flake Coatings, BoyertownTraction gets decided first. Heat and color come after it.
Four decisions we make for bare feet
A deck gets walked on wet and barefoot, so we specify it differently from a garage floor, even when the two look alike from a lawn chair.
Chip size
Larger chips give more relief underfoot. We pick a size that holds a wet heel without feeling like gravel to a kid running from the gate to the water.
How much texture stays
Indoors we scrape the chip back hard. On a deck we leave more of it standing, and the topcoat is chosen so that texture survives instead of being buried.
The splash band
Chlorinated water lands on the same strip around the pool all summer. If you want it, that strip can be made grippier than the rest of the deck.
A lighter blend
Dark chips soak up July sun. A lighter blend is kinder to bare feet, and the UV stable topcoat keeps the color you picked from fading out.
Booking around the swim season
The work happens before you open the pool or after you close it, and on a residential deck it usually takes two days. Spring is when half the township has the same idea, which is why the exterior slots disappear first. If you want the deck finished before the first warm weekend, the time to call is in the middle of winter.
What the deck looks like today changes the plan. A broom finished deck, a smooth troweled one and a deck somebody sealed a few years back each need their own approach, and we want to see which one you have before talking about blends. Old sealer, in particular, all has to come off under the grinder before a base coat will hold to the concrete.
The forecast matters as well. Exterior coatings go down on dry concrete in the right weather, so the dates get set with the forecast open and can move by a day when rain turns up. Waiting a day costs you nothing. A base coat on a damp slab costs you the floor.
Looking after it afterward is easy. Hose it off, sweep it, and now and then give the splash band a scrub with a mild cleaner and warm water.
Describe your deck and the gate, and Jimmy will call you back within a business day.The pool stays full. The deck gets done around it.
Twenty miles up the road from Boyertown
From our Boyertown shop, Blandon is about twenty miles out, north east of Reading on the Route 222 corridor and comfortably inside the roughly fifty miles we cover. Maidencreek Township is mostly newer development, so the decks we meet up here tend to be sound concrete that needs little repair before coating. That leaves more of the two days for the surface you will actually stand on.
Near the edge of our range and not sure? Pick up the phone and ask us.
Questions
Pool deck questions from Blandon backyards
Asked most often before anyone books a walkthrough for a deck.
Do we have to drain the pool?
No. The water stays where it is for the whole job. We mask the edge, run extraction on the grinders and work around it, and the pool is yours again once the deck has cured. Draining a pool for a deck coating would add risk and buy you nothing at all.
Will it be slippery when it gets wet?
It should not be, because traction is the first thing we specify on a deck. Chip size, how much texture stays standing and which topcoat goes over it are all chosen with wet bare feet in mind. If one spot needs more grip, such as the strip by the pool steps, we build that area up further.
Does the deck get hot in the sun?
Any surface sitting in full July sun warms up. Color does most of the work here, so on a sunny deck we usually steer people toward a lighter blend. Heat comes second to traction in how we specify a deck, but we talk through both before you settle on a chip.
What about the cracks and joints already in the deck?
Small cracks get cut out and filled before the base coat goes down. Joints are a different matter: they are there to move, so we coat up to each side and close the gap with a flexible sealant. Bridging a joint with coating is how a deck ends up cracked along a straight line.
Is a pool deck covered by the lifetime warranty?
No, and we would rather say so plainly. The lifetime warranty applies to residential interior floors only, and a deck lives outside in sun, chlorine and frost. Ask Jimmy at the walkthrough what he stands behind on an exterior job and he will give you a straight answer.
When should we book?
Over the winter, if you want it done before swim season. Exterior work books from spring onward and pool decks go early, because everybody wants the same few weeks. Fall, after the pool is closed for the year, is the other window, and it is worth asking about if spring is already full.
Book a walkthrough
Show Jimmy the deck and the gate
Tell us roughly how big the deck is, whether anyone ever sealed it, and how we get into the backyard. Jimmy gets back to you inside a business day and drives up to Blandon to walk the deck with you.
Product is American made and the crew is OSHA certified, working under PA HIC 177204. Phone (484) 942-3219, send a couple of photos to jfaust@cobraepoxy.com, or fill in the contact page.
Tell us about the floor
A few lines are enough to start.
More Blandon floors we coat
Next to the pool, the patio slab by the back door often goes down in the same blend, and anti slip coatings handle steps and thresholds elsewhere on the property. Inside, a peeling garage is a job for garage floor refinishing, and stockrooms and shop buildings fall under warehouse epoxy flooring. The full deck system is written up on our pool deck epoxy flooring page, finished jobs are in the gallery, and the rest of our local coverage is on the Blandon and Berks County pages.