Pool Coping Replacement and Repair in New Braunfels, TX

Laticrete, a maker of tile-setting materials, defines coping as the cap that finishes a pool's edge. It can be cast in place or precast, or made from brick, stone, metal or plastic. Whatever it's made of, the city's pool code requires coping to be slip resistant and cleanable, like the deck and step surfaces around it.

Travertine pool coping

Travertine is really a type of limestone, the Natural Stone Institute says. All true travertine has small holes, called voids, left by gases trapped as the stone formed. It's now much more common to fill them during fabrication, with a cement or resin filler, though some stone is sold unfilled. Voids just under the surface can break open later under heavy, concentrated loads. Filling them in place as they appear is accepted, common practice.

Travertine also varies more than any other natural stone, the institute adds. Ask for a range of samples before it's ordered, and have the pieces mixed from every pallet on a larger order.

Brick and precast coping

Brick coping is fired clay. One brick coping maker fires its coping at near 2000°F and says it won't fade in the sun or bleed color from pool chemicals. Fired clay varies in shade naturally, so it suggests mixing pieces from several cartons on site. Precast coping is made in molds off site, from concrete or pressed clay, then brought in and set on the pool.

Poured concrete and cantilevered edges

Cast-in-place coping is concrete formed right on top of the bond beam, the top edge of the pool shell. A cantilevered edge works differently. The deck itself reaches out over the bond beam and the waterline tile, and it has to be free to slide over the beam. One deck-form maker attaches its foam forms to the tile on gunite (sprayed concrete) pools. A layer of 15 lb felt over the bond beam then acts as a bond breaker, a layer that stops the concrete sticking. That way the deck can expand and contract without disturbing the tile.

Freezing and thawing

Winter brings freezes here, and stone and brick feel them. Repeated freezing and thawing can damage tile, stone, brick, coping and concrete, the National Plasterers Council says. Water soaked into the pores grows by about 9% in volume each time it freezes. The council adds that freeze damage isn't a material or workmanship defect.

Federal climate averages for 1991–2020 give New Braunfels 32.0 nights a year at or below 32°F, with 10.5 in January and 9.4 in December. In February 2021, the high at the city's airport on the 15th was just 15°F. For stone coping, how much water the stone takes in matters. Water absorption across limestones and travertines runs from under 1% to over 10%, the Natural Stone Institute says.

Clay that swells and shrinks

The Balcones Escarpment splits the area into Hill Country and Blackland Prairie, and the prairie soils are mainly deep clays. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's soil survey for Comal and Hays counties rates Houston Black and Heiden clays high for shrink-swell. Wet and dry spells keep some of these clays in a continuous cycle of swelling and shrinking.

That movement reaches the coping through the deck and the shell. Cracks caused by ground that swells and shrinks should be expected to keep moving, one leak-detection equipment maker says, and a repair must allow for it. Part of Hollywood Park sits on Anhalt clay, which reaches 15.9 percent on the federal shrink-swell measure; New Braunfels Quality Pool Resurfacing also offers pool coping replacement in Hollywood Park.