They did use a 4 inch travertine as the waterline. I almost did too, because when we ripped out our coping we used a 1 1/4" thick bullnose travertine. My previous coping was that hiddious white shiney cap "bathroom" tile....at least that is what it reminded me of:) My tile line now had to be 8 inches instead of the standard 6. We went with a 6 inch tile and ran it on the diagonal...its beautiful. Our pool guy had suggested doing the 2 rows of 4 inch travertine to get the 8 inches we needed to cover. I read a lot on this forum that you had to be careful with travertine inside the pool because of the chemicals....especially if you have a salt system. We dont have the salt system and I didnt want to rule out ever getting it. Another neighbor did the travertine, one row and the waterline is just at the bottom of the row. Hers has been in for a few years and she tells me she has had NO problems with it, never brushes it, etc. It looks beautiful too. Personally, I was a little nervous about putting a porous stone inside the pool and decided to do tile. Several tile places were leary of it when I would mention what I wanted to do.

Hi Scott, Yeah, I thought of that, but we sanded off sticky residue on a sub floor once, and it totally gummed up the sander. This residue stays moist due to the heat and water it is exposed to. DH said scrape it, but I am afraid of doing damage to the wood. I was hoping someone might have had some experience in a product or chemical that would remove the glue. Regarding the latex paint - I am thinking it won't hold up with all the moisture. Whatever we do, I really don't want to have to be doing it again the next year. I'd like it to last a few years. I told DH that I just want to put peel and stick vinyl tile over it - I was thinking we could even put it over the glue since we want it sticky anyway. And, I was thinking we wouldn't even have to remove the other vinyl. The only thing is that the deck is only 21" wide, and most tiles are 12" square, so we would end up having to purchase twice the amount of tile to cover it. Lynne

Hello, I'm the client in the picture above... John went MIA on me so I'm handling on my own. It's unfortunate because he was great. In the end I went with Duradeck Tiledeck as the primary water proofing membrane. I'll set the Ditra Drain on the tiledeck and then set the tile. I considered eliminating the Ditra Drain from the build up and depending on a good setting materials (Granirapid or alike). In the end I opted for the Ditra Drain. In theory it does all the wonderful things that Schluder claims (uncouling, vapour balancing, drainage for water) but in the end what sold me was I likened it to rain screen on a building envelope. I've never believed that water would travel through thinset any reasonable distance which everyone seems to tell me is the case. It's just going to sit there and saturate if exposed to continuous moisture, and at some point hopefully evaporate. With the delta drain there is the opportunity for evaporation from under the tile as well, which in my mind is a big benefit. With a good tile install, sealed grout, and well maintained I'm not expecting much water to come rolling out on the front side of the deck through the Ditra Drain. I'm thinking it can't hurt to ensure the drain mat is able to breath from both the front and back edges and not just plug up the back edge with thinset. I will say that there appears to not be one person I spoken to, nor read online that has a consistent install method. It appears this is not a common installation. I'm approaching with extreme caution. I've already learned a few lessons that I hoped to not. My first installer use a thinset mix that was too dry and the ditra drain was not properly secured. Out it's going to come out, thinset smooth and take two 1/4" higher.

WOW......Thank you so much for your quick response and extremely helpful information. I am getting a sense that 1. The tile we used should not have been recommended to us for the pool and 2. The application process was incorrect. As you requested, here are some photo's I had taken while the pool was under construction. Lucky for me, I had taken a couple pictures because I was not loving how it was coming out and wanted to document what was being used. I did not have any photos of the grout that was used. One thing I forgot to mention is that we have a ton of calcium build up as well. The tile guy came out and cleaned it off and said he sealed the tile so it would not happen again and then one month later it is back. And while I have you (Thank You so much), I am attaching a couple other photo's as well. One is showing some black stuff in the grout. I am not sure what it is and the other is showing a very large opening in the grout. We have a couple of those areas as well. Any ideas on if these two items could be an issue?? Mind you this pool was just completed in November and the problems started showing up in January. In our previous home, we had our pool built by a different company and for almost 15 years, we never had an issue. Thank you sooooo much for your help. You have no idea how much I appreciate it :)