Hi in Syracuse. We were surprised and happy to read your inquiry since it is so similar to our design issue and in the same area you are located. We are also in the CNY area and attempted to build a pool last year. We hit many issues-most having to do with our pool placement in our yard, that we have since changed. One other issue we had was the same as yours with the sundeck and how to do it. We have a pool ledge/sundeck in our design and we are wondering if you could share with us how yours was done and if you have success with it. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!! We wish to have it in the first step if it's possible. Our PB was not familiar with the sundeck and has since done one as well. (Maybe we have the same PB?). We are also wondering if you did install returns and if you felt you needed them. We are told we could have 6in water on first step and we are not sure if that's enough, although we think it is. Our sundeck design extends 6 feet. Any guidance/photos you could provide would be wonderful. Thank you in advance and we hope your pool turned out fabulous.

I have an 18'x36' in-ground Kufko pool that was installed in the late 70's. The coping is plastic and embedded into the concrete deck around the pool. The coping is now cracking, warped and pretty brittle. The pool was re-tracked by the previous owners when the current liner was installed about 15 years ago. Now I am looking at replacing the liner but would also like to replace the ugly plastic coping/edging material too. I received one estimate for $17k, for tearing up the concrete and replacing everything. That is outside of my budget. I was considering covering it with a TREX material and lagging that into the adjacent concrete deck just to cover that edge. Has anyone done that or found another lower cost retrofit for this issue?

In order for the water to go out the backwash line, it has to go through the multiport. If you don't have a sight glass on the multiport or the backwash line, you won't see any water going through the valve. If you have turned off your pump and water continues to come out the backwash line, then it is siphoning out through the multiport. This would happen if the end of the backwash line is below the water level in the pool. You can either open the air relief valve on the top of the filter, unscrew the sight glass or cut the backwash line after the multiport to stop the siphoning. I am 99.9 % certain that the problem is with the multiport. The multiport valve is the one with the spring loaded handle that has different positions or notches that the handle fits into. The handle is the one you change positions to backwash the filter.

Lou, I am impressed. Sounds like you have everything covered. I can't find anything wrong with your plan. The only thing is the bond wire does not have to be 18" deep in a trench. It literally can be on the ground. I usually try and get it a few inches under the surface since typically it is well away from any traffic areas. If it is in a traffic area then several inches down would be a good idea.