Shade, Structure, and a New Backyard Retreat | A New Deck in Macungie, PA

At Upgryd, we recently completed a brand-new deck build for a property in Macungie, PA already anchored by an above-ground pool. The pool had been sitting behind an aging wood deck with sagging lattice panels standing in for railing, boards that had weathered down to bare gray wood, and a footprint that never quite gave the pool the space it deserved.

The old lattice paneling wasn't doing much as a safety railing, and the layout boxed the pool in rather than opening it up. The client wanted a real deck around the pool: solid black aluminum railing instead of wood lattice, a proper gated stair entry, and a shaded section where they could actually sit and entertain instead of just standing next to the water.

We tore the old deck down to the ground, keeping the pool in place while we rebuilt the structure around it from scratch. Because the yard's site conditions favored it, we set the new deck's foundation on helical piers rather than poured concrete footings, giving the frame a stable base without the excavation and cure time a traditional foundation would need. The new layout also had to account for a gated cutout where the deck meets the pool's stairs, so we built the framing around that access point from the start instead of retrofitting it later.

For the decking itself, we installed Deckorators Summit in Boulder, a warm mid-tone composite, framed with a single-board picture frame and matching Summit fascia in the same color. The stairs down to the pool level use the same Boulder Summit boards, fastened with the Cortex hidden fastening system so there's no visible hardware on the treads.

Along the base of the deck, we wrapped the exposed framing in composite skirting panels, also in Boulder, with a single access gate for maintenance underneath. For the railing, we went with Deckorators' black aluminum Rapid Rail on 2.5-inch aluminum posts, with a matching aluminum stair gate at the pool-side steps for safety.

The biggest visual upgrade on this project is the 12x14 black aluminum louvered pergola we installed over the lower section of the deck — a manually operated louvered roof that gives the space real shade control it didn't have before. We finished the railing posts with LED wedge lights so the deck stays lit and usable after the sun goes down.

The finished space now gives the pool a real deck to go with it: a full-width upper platform for lounging, a shaded, furnished section under the pergola for eating and grilling, and a gated stair run down to the pool itself, all tied together in the same Boulder composite and black aluminum hardware. Where the yard once had a tired wood deck patched together with lattice, it now has a built-from-the-ground-up structure on helical piers that's built to outlast the old one by decades.

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