Once the pool was in place, we filled the openings around the pool with stone gravel. Nothing with equipment. Simply good old back breaking work. Once that job was complete, I could start on the pool deck.
I would use pressure-treated wood for the structure. I would have preferred a more stable, man-made decking, but there were limited options back then, and they were very costly. So, it would be pressure-treated wood for the deck.
I had drawn out a layout of the supporting posts, beams, and joists for the pool deck. My biggest challenge would be getting the pool structure as close to the pool as possible so the deck could abut against the pool edge. When I determined the wood I would need, I placed my order with the lumber yard. Once I receive it, I would be ready to go.
The kids and their friends were enjoying the pool. I would get splashed a lot as I worked around the pool, but in most cases, I did not mind. As I worked in the summer sun, I would occasionally dip my head in the pool to cool off. Or sometimes just dive in with my clothes and all and let the sun dry me off.
We received a letter in the mail from the city inspector that our pool was in violation of city code. One of our neighbors complained (and I was not sure who it was). In a normal application, the pool walls are four feet high which provides the four-foot barrier. Since the pool was two feet into the ground, it did not have that four-foot barrier. The height was only two feet. So, I had to go out and buy four-foot snow fencing to keep the neighbor happy. I just wrapped it around the pool. It was free standing and the kids could access the pool by moving the fence like a gate.
The lumber finally arrived so I could start on the deck. I would start the deck on the front side of the pool for two reasons. (1) It would give a reference point on the height of the deck and (2) give a place for the kids to enter the pool without stepping on the stone gravel in front of the pool.
There was going to be plenty of hardware to build the structure. I had a large bag of lag bolts, carriage bolts, washers, and nuts. I would put my Sears Craftman® rachet wrench and Black and Decker® corded drill to work.
I was still confused how I would get the deck flush with the top rail of the pool. My biggest problem was the pool rail was not level. The pool walls were about 2 inches lower on the deep end. I would need to adjust the pool deck height to keep it level with the pool. I believed that would just emphasize the unevenness of the pool. I decided to compensate for the error by having the deck edge sit on top of the pool rail. The deck would extend to the inside of the pool rail. I was not sure how I would do it, so I would work on it as I built the deck. Unfortunately, that additional height would result in the deck being too high and a step would be needed. (Which I never added.)
Before I could start the deck, I needed to put in concrete footings. Normally, you would pour the cement in round cardboard forms to make post footings. Nope, I was just going to pour the cement into the hole. There would be twenty-eight 4-foot deep footings. I rented a two-man post hole digger. With the help of Efiwym’s brother-in-law, we dug out all the holes that we needed except…
When you use stone gravel as back fill, you have a great difficulty digging out 8-inch-wide holes. The stones just collapse into the holes. As we pulled the post hole digger out of the hole, the stones would just fall in. We shoveled away the stones the best we could. Also, I could not get as close to the pool as I wanted with the inner footings. I would need to cantilever the joists even further than I planned. Most of the 12 holes that were close to the pool did not exactly go four feet deep. Only Jack Frost would know. And he did his magic every winter by lifting the concrete footings out of the ground about an inch at a time.
The next day I made many batches of pre-mixed cement in my wheelbarrow. Using my wheelbarrow as a pouring device, I filled in the footing forms and then used a 2 x 2 to tap down the cement to make sure the holes were full. I was done for the weekend, time for a dip in the pool.
The next weekend I was ready to start building the deck structure.