Artificial grass around a pool: at home it’s your call, at a community pool the surround comes first

Around the pool is one of the places where artificial grass is asked for most: it needs no watering, makes no mud and leaves no clippings floating in the water. It works, but two things decide whether it turns out well. And if the pool belongs to an owners’ community, there’s a third that doesn’t exist at home: a regulation.

The short answer: at your own pool it’s your call, but grass that gets walked on barefoot needs shade during the hours of strong sun and a base that drains. At a community pool, the pool is surrounded by a strip at least 1.20 metres wide, class 3 slip-resistant and free of puddles, and the grass starts behind it.

One: it gets walked on barefoot

Around a pool everyone goes barefoot, and that’s exactly where a floor that burns is least forgiven. Artificial grass has no water to evaporate, so in the sun it gets much hotter than natural grass. Why, and where to put it, in does artificial grass get hot.

What solves it isn’t a better fibre, it’s shade. Before deciding how far the grass goes, look at where the sun falls at three in the afternoon in July: whatever is in full sun at that time will be the patch nobody walks on.

Two: the water that comes out of the pool

In summer, the grass around the pool gets water all day: splashes, what drips off every swimmer, what comes off when the edge is cleaned. If the base underneath drains, that water goes. If it’s compacted soil or a concrete slab with nowhere for the water to go, it stays, and in time the grass smells and grows algae underneath. What to check in the base is in artificial grass drainage.

And the slope should run away from the pool, not towards it: what runs over the grass carries dust and leaves, and you don’t want it going back into the water.

At a community pool, the surround comes first

In Andalusia pools have their own regulations, Decree 485/2019 (the Reglamento Técnico-Sanitario de las Piscinas en Andalucía). Pools belonging to owners’ communities are type 3A, and the regulations apply in full to communities of twenty or more homes; to smaller ones, only in part.

Its article 4.2 says that the surround, the strip around the pool, is subject to the Spanish building code, the Código Técnico de la Edificación. And the building code, in its section on pool safety, is very specific about that surround: a class 3 floor, at least 1.20 metres wide, and built so that water doesn’t puddle.

Class 3 is the most demanding of the four slip-resistance classes the building code sets for floors: over 45 in the pendulum test. It’s the same class it requires for outdoor pool floors in hotels, schools or sports centres, because that’s where people walk wet and barefoot.

For the community, the consequence is simple. Grass, natural or artificial, goes in the rest area, which the regulations themselves define as one of “grass or other paving” for play or rest. On the surround, the only artificial grass that fits is one that comes with a class 3 test result for that product, in writing. If the one you’re offered doesn’t, the surround keeps its paving.

The building code applies to building works: it matters the day the community replaces the surround floor, which is exactly when someone suggests putting grass down. And, for its part, it only leaves out pools at single-family homes. If you look after the gardens of an urbanisation, what we do there is in communal garden maintenance.

And at home?

A single-family pool is type 3B, and neither the Andalusian regulations nor that section of the building code apply to it. The grass can go right up to the stone edge if you want.

Artificial grass up to the stone edge, with the sun loungers on it. At a home it can be done like this; on the surround of a community pool, only with grass certified as class 3.

Even so, the reason behind the rule holds at home too: the strip you step on coming out of the water is the one that’s most slippery and gets the most water. Leaving a band of non-slip stone around the pool and starting the grass behind it isn’t compulsory, but it’s the sensible thing to do.

What to ask before it goes down

• What base it goes on and where the water drains to. If the answer is “it goes on whatever’s there”, that’s a bad start.
• Which way the slope runs. Away from the pool.
• If it’s going on a community pool surround, the class 3 test result for that specific grass, not for the brand in general.
• Where the sun falls in mid-afternoon in summer, so you don’t put grass where nobody will be able to walk on it.

In short

Around a pool at home, artificial grass works if there’s shade where people walk and a base that drains away from the pool. At a community pool, the surround comes first: 1.20 metres, class 3 and no puddles, as the building code requires through the Andalusian pool regulations. The grass goes behind it, in the rest area, unless the one for the surround is certified as class 3.