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he extreme cantilever method of integrating an automatic cover into a free-form pool is challenging enough with concrete structures. If you bring a fiberglass vessel into the picture, you’ve substantially boosted the difficulty level.
Jason Lott, president of Paradise Pools & Construction in Lindon, Utah, builds gunite and fiberglass vessels. While he’ll charge 20 to 30 percent extra for gunite, he’ll add 40 percent for a fiberglass pool.
For one thing, the fiberglass project must be filled as soon as it’s installed, so crews have to work with a wet pool. The process also requires extra concrete pours because it’s not like gunite or shotcrete, where the pool, underdeck and bond beam can be shot together. Fiberglass installers must create a separate footer that locks in the pool, supports both levels of deck and provides a place for mounting the tracks. Of course, this should all be designed by a professional engineer.
You have two options for handling the underdeck. On Jay Tucker’s installations, the footing acts as the bottom shelf. It’s similar to what he uses on all his fiberglass pools. But it extends back far enough to accommodate the track and doesn’t cover the pool’s lip.
“We pour it up right to the edge of that outside perimeter, exposing the top lip of the pool,” says Tucker, owner of Swim World Pools in Gallatin, Tenn. That way, the fiberglass lip provides a face for the underdeck.
Lott pours an underdeck that is separate from the footing. This lower deck dowels into the footing in the back. It caps off the lip of the fiberglass pool.
Finally, forming the deck is more difficult than in a concrete vessel, because no weight can rest on the shell. You can’t nail forms into the fiberglass wall, as you would with shotcrete or gunite.
Lott utilizes a series of 2-by-4’s to support sheets of plywood just as he does with his gunite pools. But his crews have to use extra-long 2-by-4’s, and run them across the pool and through the other side of the deck. Here, the ultimate support comes from the ground across the pool rather than the shell.
“It’s almost like you’re building a floor across the pool,” Lott says. The crew places some plywood pieces on the water side of the pool, so they have an area to walk while they pour. (Remember, the pool is filled with water.)
“We probably use one-third more forming material on a fiberglass pool,” than on gunite, Lott says.
