Pool activity has resumed and a lot has been accomplished in the last few weeks, including the installation of the 3" thick granite coping slabs and the 6" high waterline tile. In progress now is the installation of the granite pavers around the pool, creating two patio areas -- at either end of the pool -- and a walkway connection to the upper terrace outside the living room.
Here's a close-up view of the granite coping stones and the waterline tile.
For the patios around the pool (and elsewhere on the site), the town's Conservation Commission required that they be pervious, meaning that they be designed to allow rainwater to percolate through them to the soil beneath rather than allowing runoff, with its contaminants, to find its way to Long Island Sound. Normally that means placing paving stones on a bed of sand over a substrate such as gravel. That definitely provides a pervious solution, but not a very structurally stable one over time.
With the support of a couple civil engineers and a lot of calculations, we were able to get the Commission to approve our solution, which starts with a structural concrete slab to provide long-term stability. Weep holes through the slab, arranged in a grid 2' on center, provide a path through to the soil for the rainwater to percolate. The holes were filled with gravel to prevent them from becoming clogged over time and were then covered with a fabric to keep the sand bed from washing away through the holes. The stone pavers were then set with 1/8" spacing on the sand bed, providing an engineer-stamped pervious patio which we hope will also stand flat, level, and straight for a long time.
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