Welcome to the decking phase of your pool build. This step ties the entire backyard altogether. Before the pour begins, meet with your contractor, confirm who's providing the materials and the material selections such as broom finish, wash, or stamped concrete. Take note that concrete is best poured in early morning to avoid hot load cracking. And remember, make sure to have passed your pre deck inspection before going on to this phase. As always, make sure to look at that pressure gauge and that pressure is holding steady before proceeding with this subcontractor. We feel it's best to pay for the pump and concrete directly upon delivery so that the process is completely transparent. Make sure the site is fully ready. The overflow should be connected to your drainage. And make sure to install sleeves for future utilities like drip lines, irrigation, or low voltage wiring. During installation, safety and durability are essential. Choose non slip materials like textured concrete, composite decking, or non gloss pavers. When doing your decking, drainage is critical. Make sure the slope is set at two percent away from the house. Make sure that downspouts are tied into your drainage. And check if your jurisdiction requires any curb cores or pop up emitters. All trenches should be compacted to about ninety eight percent. If your soil conditions require it, make sure to add a proper sub base prior to pour. You should also ensure the installation of a number eight copper bonding wire around the entire perimeter of the pool, and it should be grounded to the steel cage at four or more points in order to meet code. Foam should be installed around the coping to allow for movement. This will later be replaced with caulking. Expansion joints and score joints are extremely important. The more joints you have, the more you can control cracking. As the concrete is poured, finishes are going to smooth and screen the surface evenly. If you opt for it, a final broom finish will add texture and slip resistance. It's a good idea to protect your home and nearby finishes with plastic tarps during the concrete pour. You're gonna wanna wet down the concrete for a few days after it's been completed. Check with your subcontractor on their recommendations. And lastly, double check that all sleeves and drains are in the proper place prior to pour. You can download your checklist and check out the FAQs after this video. But before you do, let's join Mike as he shows us a few examples of what you can expect in the field on concrete day. Today, let's talk about the different styles of your concrete decking. The most common is broom finish concrete. Now broom finish is where they take a broom once they've got everything ready and are about to do the final finish, and they take a broom and just take it right over the top of your concrete decking, and that's gonna give a real nice light finish that makes it a little bit less slippery, but not too grippy. When you're having that done, you can ask them for a heavy broom if you really want it grippy or just the standard broom finish. With that, you can also choose different colors for your concrete. If you go with the darker color, do note that the darker color is gonna retain more heat, and also the darker color is gonna show more of what they call modeling where you're gonna see almost like a marbled look where parts of the deck will be lighter, parts of the deck will be a little bit darker. If you don't like that look, then stay with either a very light color or leave it just natural gray. Next, we're gonna talk about travertine. Travertine is very, very popular right now. A lot of our clients are using it. It's a very good product. It's very durable, long lasting. It's a little expensive because of not only buying the material, but the labor that it takes to install it. They'll have to put a base down first and then put the travertine on top of that base. So there is a little bit more expense with travertine, but it's a very beautiful look. When you're looking at travertines, make sure you not only like the color, but also check the texture and make sure that it's gonna be rough enough finish to be around the pool. Since you're gonna be out around the pool with wet bare feet, we don't want anybody slipping. So do check the finish of the product before you make any final decisions. Let's talk about stamped concrete finishes. Instead of putting a broom to the top of the concrete to put the finish on, they're gonna instead put a release down, which could be powder or liquid, and they're gonna put the mats on there, stamp them down in, and create a stamped pattern, look to the concrete, and you can choose various colors for that. It gives a very unique and custom look to your concrete. Another option would be to do pavers. Pavers are great because you don't have to worry about any cracking ever happening. They come in all different sizes, all different colors. You will have a little bit more expense with pavers because you have to pay for the base that goes down first and then the pavers on top of them, but that's a great option. A little bit more expensive, but a great option for your decking. If you can afford it, it's a great way to go. Alright. Most people nowadays, if they don't do concrete or doing some type of, paver pad, whether that be, pavers, travertine, porcelain pavers, the way that starts off is you're gonna have a gravel base that they're gonna put down, just like you see here. Now, once they get that gravel base in here, what they're going to do is come back in here and compact it all. Once it's all compacted, then they're going to put in a Geotex fabric, and that helps from weeds coming up through it. Once that Geotex fabric goes in, then they're going to put in a product. There's different ones out there. The most popular is a product called EZ Set. That's EZ Set. And that's a product that you mix. You're going to mix it up with a threeeight inches crushed gravel and water. You'll follow the bag's recommendations. And then they're going to level that out in the same area and get it good and compacted. And then your pavers go on top of that, and you can actually mud or cement or grout the back of that paver and then put it right on top. That way you don't get a hollow sound when you're walking on it. It feels nice and solid, and that way they can actually set those in there. Now you can also use that to put in artificial turf. So either way, you're getting a permeable surface. That allows water to seep through. You don't need as much drainage that way. And especially if you're in an area that is concerned about permeable and impermeable areas, areas that allow water to soak through areas that don't, then you're gonna wanna definitely use a product like that that allows the water to seep through. Let's assume that your coping has all been installed like it is here, and they're about ready to pour your decking. What you're gonna wanna do is have them use some of this DecoFoam. It's about four inches thick, and the very top of it has a perforated piece like this that comes off. And what's going to happen is they're going to glue this, not nail it, but glue it like liquid nails works really well. They're going to want to put this just alongside the edge of your coping so that when they pour the concrete, which we're going to pretend is this right here, it's going to go right up to that deco foam. Once the concrete's cured, they're going to come out, they're going to tear out that very top layer of that deco foam, and in that space in between where you tore out that deco foam, that's where they're going to be adding a mastic or joint compound. This particular product is a self levelizing one. This one's made by a company called Deco Seal, and it'll come with a little cap that goes on it with a nozzle, and you simply pour it in there and it self levelizes so that it creates a barrier so no moisture or water gets inside there. There are others. This is a different one. Does the exact same thing. This one's called NovaLink. It also is a joint sealant that is self levelizing. So once they've torn that top piece out, they'll use one of these joint compounds to fill it in, and once they're done, my pro tip is to put a little silica sand across the top of it. It gives it almost a grout look, especially if you have grout in between your joints. It's gonna match that grout joint look a lot better. They just need to sprinkle a little bit of silica sand over the top, and it makes it look really good. Now we're talking about the bonding of your pool. You should have already had the inspection, but if not, you have to make sure you have it before any decking goes down. Have the inspector come out, they're going to check that those four whips around the pool were clamped onto that bonding wire that goes around the pool. Again, check with your local jurisdiction to see exactly how they want that done. Most just require a number eight bonding wire surrounding that pool. At those four connection points, they're all grounded and bonded together with a split nut. And check with them though because it may be that you have to do an actual steel cage grid around the outside of the pool and some jurisdictions even require a copper bonding grid that needs to be done. If that's something you're going to need, you'll have to buy that separately. It rolls out around the pool and then again attach it to those four WIPs. But check with your jurisdiction, make sure you're doing what they require and that you're having that inspection done prior to the decking going in. Let's talk about the pre pour setup. Before the concrete comes, you're gonna wanna make sure that all the forms are set at the correct height so the elevations are all correct. Your form boards may have kickers on the side that help keep the boards in place. You're going to want to make sure all the trenches that were there are all backfilled and compacted. If you had a deep end ramp, that's going to need to be backfilled and compacted as well. And make sure that your drainage is set up. You're going to always want your drains to have a flow to them away from your house and away from the pool at about a two percent rate for the drainage, and those are going to go out into the rest of your drainage system. You're also going to want to hook up your overflow to those drains as well, and make sure any sleeves that you need for planters are in. In case you want to run any low voltage wire or irrigation to those planters, make sure those sleeves are input in place before the concrete shows up. Here we show the concrete being delivered and poured into the back of the pumper into what they call the hopper. That's going to be transferred into a hose. It's about a three inch black hose, almost looks like a fire hose, and it's gonna go into the backyard and pour all the concrete wherever it needs to go. A couple things with this is you may wanna put down some tarps or ask the guys if they could put down some tarps. It's a little messy around the hopper and the pumper, so that way you don't get any mess anywhere. Also, about if you can pay for the concrete and or the pump separately yourself. In that way, one, you know that the concrete bill's been paid, and two, you may be able to get a little bit better price if you pay it direct and that we don't have to pay any markup that your subcontractor maybe was trying to make on those two items. Here we show the concrete going down to the backyard. They're going to do a process they call screeding when it first goes in, then they're gonna do a bowl float, which gets more of a creamy finish on the top, and then they'll do the edging and score joining, and then, of course, the final finish. Now on the score joints, you're gonna want more joints than less. Those joints are where the cracking should happen when it does happen on the concrete. You'd like it to happen in those score joints, so ask your contractor where he's gonna be putting those score joints. Remember, the more the merrier because it'll give it a place to crack so it doesn't crack in the middle of the deck. Instead, it cracks right in that expansion joint. Alright. Let's talk about the curing process of the concrete once it's gone down. You wanna have asked your concrete crew if they want you to water down the concrete once it's been set. Some will actually want you to wait about twenty four hours and then get some water on it and keep it wet. Others won't. So make sure you check with them. And, of course, if it's travertine or pavers, you're not gonna do any of that. That would only be if your concrete was being poured. Alright? And, also, make sure you keep all your pets and people from walking over the fresh concrete. I know I shouldn't have to say it, but I cannot tell you how many times pets have walked out on the fresh concrete. Now they have paw prints all across their brand new concrete. So, I shouldn't have to say it, but I'm gonna because I don't wanna see that happen to you. Now if you decide to seal your concrete, that's something you're gonna wanna do once the concrete is cured out. Most people will tell you that they wanted to wait at least thirty days of cure time before you seal the concrete. And if you're gonna use a sealer, it usually pays to buy a better sealer that's gonna last longer. And so check with your concrete guys, ask them what sealer they would recommend. They may even do the sealing yourself if that's something you decide to do. And also try to pick a sealer that's not gonna have a real glossy finish to it. Those tend to be very slippery, and you don't wanna make it slippery around your pool. So ask them about that and make sure that you're using one that's made to be around the outside edge of a pool, and then you can do that again after the curing process, which is usually about thirty days. Pro tip for your masonry crew, whenever you have planters around your pool, make sure they're gonna run a waterline stub so that this particular one is set up to run a grip system inside this planner. And there's also a low voltage, wire that's sitting in here. They call this a twelve tube burial wire, so that way you can run low voltage up lights or any other kind of lights you'd want in here. So always make sure that if you have planters around your pool before they pour any of the deck or put in pavers whatever you're doing, that they run some stubs to those planters so that you don't get stuck later with trying to get water, speakers, or lights out to those planters.