Appreciate the info on the Deckstone, I like how the tiles look and the materials sound so much better than composite deck materials. Never understand the logic of putting material that would rot or go bad into a product for exterior use, like putting wood in the composite wood, and those masonite sidings that had paper in it? It is like waiting for disaster to happen. Tried to figure out if 'regular' exterior tiles weight less than Deckstone, and found this site:http://www2.daltile.com/exteriors.cfm. It lists a lot of choices just not able to get the info of the weight per sq.ft. like Deckstone has listed. John made some excellent points, I would need steel frame for a concrete deck. That would be costly. I am leaning on tiling the deck. So far after talking with two contractors, I basically had to redo the decking to hold the extra weight of the tiles. I am waiting for my handyman to come and confirm the cost and whether he is comfortable to do it or not. I think he is pretty honest to let me know his comfort level. I will let you know how that goes. If you find anything else please let me know.

thanks again. Today was nice out and we did get a chance to sit out there without freezing. Then my dh had to get to the airport so the sun worshipping ended. lyban, we bought that firetable from Lowe's. The patio store sells them too, however they sell theirs for over $2k and there was no way I could ever justify that. This was around $300 or so. We took the lava rocks out and replaced with the fire glass. It looks soooo much better. Has a nice sparkle to it when it's lit. The lava rocks were just dead darkness. We ordered the fireglass from Amazon after picking out the colors in person at the patio store....again, they wanted $15/lb. We bought for around $5/lb. Big difference considering we bought 30lbs of it. b's mom--oh, a g&t would be lovely. What time will you get here? And yes, the deck is large. (I actually wanted it to go out further but you just gotta stop spending somewhere, right? It's 34' long. tinan, yes, I'm already thinking about the candles and melting issue....probably have to go with battery candles. I just love the blue though. Here is a link that might be useful: some of the fire glass on Amazon

If the current slab is at least 3000 PSI concrete you will never generate that force on that deck even with dynamic forces. If your posts are 6X6 then the weight that slab should be able to bear on one post is about 81,000 pounds dead weight. Of course you will only have about 15,000 pounds maximum distributed over 8 posts. I wouldn't tie the deck to the house though if you are in a freeze thaw climate. The slab will raise and lower during freeze thaws. This might damage the siding or facade. If the concrete has large voids underneath it then the load it can carry will greatly decrease, and may not be able to hold the deck without cracking. If there is wiremesh in the slab or rebar the flexural strength will be enough to span a small void. Either way the crack wont open up if mesh is properly installed.

Our pool builder here in SoCal talked me out of the concrete finishes I thought I wanted--in a good way, because his company is really, really good. His concern was that no one slip and fall, and he does almost all the decks with concrete, and then an acid wash. I suppose that like others said, it exposes a bit of the particles of the concrete, but it's regular concrete, not with added pebbles or anything like that. So it looks like concrete, just not slippery. I wouldn't consider broom finish, because that seems like a driveway finish. What I'm talking about is more uniform looking. It just looks better aesthetically. Boy, am I glad we did the acid wash finish. While watching a dozen kids in the pool, I never, ever have to yell out to them to not run around the pool. They can run all they want, and no one has ever slipped and fallen. Not even once, and our pool build was in 2011. I had a top-notch pool builder, and he was definitely right about the deck.