Hi Deckman.

We cut all our support frames and were ready to set up yesterday. We got two attached and realized the angle of the frame would bring the next support frame even tighter to the pool wall. In order to make sure that we weren't going to be in a big problem half-way thru the setup, we laid out all the support frames around the pool to see how to position them. In order to have the first half of the frames (about 12 frames) come around the pool without touching the walls, we have to go out 14'' from the coping! When we place the next 4 frames, we start to come in tight to the wall again.

We've gone back and rechecked our measurements and all are done according to plan. Any suggestions - it almost looks like the frames would fit a 21 or 24 pool, not our 27. But our 'outside' boards are all 4"1.5, and our 'inside' boards are all 3"4.5. and we've used a 7.5 angle.

Any thoughts as to what we've done wrong, or how we can fix this? We're thinking of building wedges between every 4 or 5th support frame to 'widen' the angles a bit..

Any help/suggestions would be appreciated (hubby wanted to build a plain square deck without any 'darn angles', and I talked him into this one....*gulp*)

thanks

The positioning of the first three support frames are the most difficult. Remember, you are placing straight pieces of wood around a curved object that is most likely not an exact circle. There are very few reference points to work from and its extremely difficult to mark and use the center of the pool. Positioning the first couple frames is more about trial and error than technical skill. Since the year 2000 when we first developed the Splash Pool Deck plans, unfortunately, we have not found a better system than trial and error on the first three sections. But once the first three sections are positioned and curve properly, the remaining sections will fall into place until the last frame.

Don't get frustrated, this is extremely common. The angle of the very first section is slightly off. I would "bet" that the first section is parallel to the coping. This is the most logical place to start, but there are probably more or less sections of coping than there are frames. If there are different numbers, then none of the frames should be parallel to the coping. Rotate the first section such that what you currently have will begin to curve properly.

Thanks Deckman. We're working thru it and it's coming together much better now. (and thanks for the compound miter cut reply to someone elses bracing question - that helped a lot too!