How To Deal With Cracks Around Your Concrete Pool Deck

13 February 2020
 Categories: , Blog


Concrete is a popular deck material because it is affordable to install, requires little maintenance, and is easy to customize to the particular shape of your pool. Your concrete pool deck is an important part of your pool. It frames your pool and provides a safe environment for people getting in and out of your pool.

When your concrete pool deck develops a crack, you no longer have a safe environment for people to get in and out of your pool, which is why any cracks around your pool deck need to be quickly addressed.

Determine Why the Concrete Cracked

Before you start to fill the crack, you need to determine why the concrete cracked. Concrete can crack for a variety of reasons — some of them are simple, and others are more complex.

Concrete sometimes simply cracks because of temperature changes from hot to cold weather and vice versa. Your concrete may crack because expansion joints were not placed in the concrete deck. These are not the types of cracks you need to worry about; you just need to get them repaired.

Sometimes, concrete cracks because of underlying structural issues or ground movement. This is particularly concerning around your pool because cracks caused by structural issues and ground movement could impact your pool as well. Structural cracks caused by the movement of your pool are serious and will require more advanced intervention than filling in the crack. You will need to work with a swimming pool and concrete engineer to stabilize your pool and concrete deck to prevent further damage to the concrete deck and to the pool.

Dealing with the Crack

How you deal with the crack depends on the type of crack that you have and how quickly you need the crack to fill so you can use your pool again.

If you just have some simple hairline cracks that are caused by temperature change and normal settling, you can fill them with either a concrete patch mix or with epoxy. These types of repairs generally wear off over time and will have to be repeated. If you want the repair to be more permanent and to require less downtime around your pool over the long run, use polymer filler. It can take a little longer to cure initially, but the polymer is stronger than a concrete patch mix or epoxy and will require less repair work around your pool.

If the crack is large, you are going to want to use a vinyl crack filler. If the crack is because of a structural issue, you will want to bring in a professional to fix the crack. A professional may use mortar to both fill the crack and stabilize your concrete deck and pool.

When you see a crack around your pool, you need to determine why the crack developed before you deal with it. Cracks that develop closer to the pool are more concerning than cracks that develop further away from the pool. Always check with an expert before filling the cracks to make sure there is not a structural issue that needs to be addressed with the pool. When filing surface cracks, use filler material that will last longer so you can enjoy safe access to your pool without endless repairs.

To learn more, contact a swimming pool repair company.


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