Deck Level or Freeboard

Deck Level Pools

In a deck level pool, the water flows over the coping stones and then across a grill or slot in the paving which allows the water to drop into a gutter below the grill. If there are 10 people in the pool they will displace about 750 litres of water that needs to be stored somewhere. It is for this reason that every deck level pool has a balance tank.

The water is collected from the gutter by a gravity drain and taken to the balance tank. It is pumped from there, through the filter and disinfection systems and returned to the pool by the water inlets.

The extra equipment normally increases the cost of the pool by about £10,000 and can be more than this depending on the type of grill that is used to cover the gutters.

The Advantages of a Deck Level Pool:

• There is a long weir and grill around the entire or part pool perimeter that significantly improves the quality of the pool water because the continuous weir removes a lot more surface water then a couple of skimmers
• In a freeboard pool a vertical wall face about 150mm high is prominently seen around the whole pool perimeter. Therfore, visually the deck level pool is far more attractive because the water surface laps over the coping stones into a hidden gutter that carries it to the balance tank. As the whole height of the pool wall is covered by water there is little point in tiling a pool as the tiles will never be seen.

Deck Level Pool

Freeboard Pools

Traditional pools were all freeboard type pools where the pool water level is kept about 150mm below the coping stones around the pool perimeter. Water is taken off the surface of the pool by "skimmers" that are normally white, between 300mm and 500mm wide and about 150mm deep. Within the skimmer, there is a floating weir that maintains the same flow rate when the water level varies and is designed to remove and process the thin layer on the surface of the pool water where most of the debris and the pathogens that feed on it accumulate.

Freeboard Pool