Concrete Pool Surrounds

Three things a pool surround has to do

Stay cool. This is the one that decides the finish. A dark surface next to a pool is unusable barefoot on a hot February afternoon. Pale mixes, whether liquid limestone or a light honed or exposed aggregate, reflect heat instead of holding it.

Grip when wet. People get out of a pool and walk on it dripping. A polished or heavily sealed smooth surface is the wrong answer. Honed stopped at a matte level, or exposed aggregate, both give enough texture without being harsh underfoot.

Drain away from the house. Splash-out and rain both have to go somewhere, and the answer cannot be towards the back door or into the pool. Fall gets set at the start, not adjusted later.

It is an outdoor living area, not edging

On most Perth blocks the concrete around the pool ends up being the whole usable back yard. Treating it as a border a metre wide and then starting a different material beyond it is what makes a yard feel chopped into pieces. Carrying one surface through, from the coping out to wherever the yard actually ends, is almost always the better result and it is rarely much more concrete.

The seamless edge

The phrase Regan uses for this is a seamless pool edge, and it is the detail he keeps coming back to across these jobs. It means the concrete runs to the water without a joint, a strip of a second material, or a lip where the coping was bedded separately.

Getting there is a setting out problem rather than a finishing one. The fall has to run away from the water over the whole surround, the coping line has to be true before any concrete goes near it, and the pour has to be planned so a construction joint does not land somewhere the eye follows. Fix any of that after the fact and it shows for the life of the pool.

The details that show

A flush skimmer box lid rather than one sitting proud. A clean, consistent line where the concrete meets the coping. Where decking runs alongside, levels set so the two materials finish flush instead of one stepping over the other. None of this is visible when it is done properly, which is rather the point.

Three recent ones

Gwelup. Surrounds wrapping the pool and continued out into the adjoining living space, one surface throughout.

Duncraig. Honed surround with decking to one side, set so the concrete and the timber meet level.

A coloured surround. Warm toned concrete wrapping a kidney shaped pool and carried back under the patio, run to a seamless edge. The close photo above is the whole point of that detail: concrete to water, no coping strip, no lip to stub a toe on.

Get a price

Ring Regan on 0433 510 118.