Turf inside Alafaya's screened pool cages

Pool-area turf isn't its own price tier; it rides the residential range, $8–$18 a square foot, since the state doesn't carve out a separate category for a lanai. A large share of Alafaya's 1990s and early-2000s homes were built with a screened pool cage, and the concrete deck around that pool is exactly where sod has never had a chance.

Reviewed by Luis Austin, owner · Last reviewed September 21, 2026

A worked example: a 260 sq ft lanai strip around a pool

Say a 1990s Eastwood pool home has a 260 sq ft strip of bare, unusable ground between the pool deck and the screen frame. Priced in the residential range at $8–$18 a square foot, glue-down turf over a drainage underlay for that strip runs between $2,080 and $4,680, usually toward the upper half of that band because of the smaller area and the underlay and edge-gluing work a concrete deck needs. The result replaces a patch that's been bare dirt for years with a surface that actually drains toward the deck's existing drain.

Why so many Alafaya pool decks never grew grass

Homes built through Waterford Lakes and Eastwood's main construction years commonly came with a screened lanai wrapped around the pool, and whatever strip of ground sits between the pool deck and the screen frame usually gets too much foot traffic and too little direct rain, since the screen roof sheds water away from that narrow band. What's there after twenty-plus years is often bare soil, weeds, or a thin remnant of sod that never filled in, not a lawn that's declining, more a lawn that was never really established.

Choosing infill that won't wash toward the deck drain

The state's rule against infill washing off the property has a specific practical version on a Alafaya pool deck: infill brushed in too lightly along a border that slopes toward the deck's drain can wash into that drain during a hard rinse or a storm, which turns a turf maintenance issue into a plumbing one. A slightly heavier grain of whichever infill the border uses, silica or coated sand, resists that migration better than a lighter, finer product does in exactly this drain-facing situation. This is a narrower concern than general odor or bacteria control, and it only applies to the specific stretch of border actually sloping toward a drain.

Building turf on a concrete deck instead of soil

Inside the cage, turf usually goes down over the existing concrete deck rather than excavated soil, which changes the base from crushed rock to a drainage underlay designed for hard surfaces, and changes the edges from nailed to glued, since there's no ground to anchor into at the screen frame's base. That underlay is what keeps the deck draining toward its original drain instead of pooling under the turf during a summer storm, which matters more inside a screen enclosure than outside one, since there's no way for rain to just run off the edge of a lanai the way it can off an open lawn.

Why the ground near the pump pad stays wetter than the rest of the yard

The equipment pad next to a pool, where the pump and filter sit, sheds backwash and drips more consistently than any other spot on a Alafaya lot, and turf bordering that pad needs the same washed rock depth and undisturbed native sand as anywhere else to keep that extra moisture moving down instead of sitting at the surface. Compacting the soil under that section too hard, which is easy to do when equipment traffic has already packed it down over the years, works against the percolation the state's turf standard requires. A border here often needs a fresh pass of loosening before rock goes down.

The slight dip that can form around a screen cage footer

A screen cage's concrete footers and the surrounding Alafaya deck border's rock-and-turf base can settle at slightly different rates over a season or two, since one sits on its own small concrete pad and the other on compacted rock over native sand, and that difference sometimes shows up as a faint dip or ridge ringing each footer. It's rarely a structural issue with either the cage or the turf, just two systems settling independently, but it's worth checking during a routine perimeter walk since a growing gap at a footer can eventually catch a bare foot or trap water in a small ring.

Building a border and a glued floor as one sequenced job

When a Alafaya property gets both an open deck border and a glued lanai floor at the same visit, the rock base for the border goes in and compacts first, before the slab gets pressure washed for the glue-down section, so dust and loose fines from the soil work do not land on a clean, prepped slab. Compacting the border early also gives that section time to settle while the crew finishes prepping and gluing the floor, rather than rushing both areas to be ready on the same afternoon. The two areas finish on the same day even though they are built in a different order.

Brushing the crossing point between the loungers and the ladder

The stretch of turf that gets crossed barefoot between a set of loungers and the pool ladder mats down faster than any other section of a Alafaya deck border, since it carries more repeated foot traffic in a single afternoon than the rest of the yard sees in a week. Brushing that crossing against the grain every few weeks keeps the blades standing instead of laying over permanently along the worn path. A section further from the water, along a side fence, rarely needs the same attention since almost nobody walks it directly.

Chemicals, screen frames and what shortens a pool-area lawn's life

A pool deck's turf takes a different kind of abuse than a front yard's: chlorine splash, acid wash runoff during a resurface, and bare feet dripping pool water rather than rain. None of that is covered by the state's turf standard, which is written around lawns and waterbodies, not pool chemistry, so keeping concentrated chemicals off the turf's edge and rinsing splash away before it dries into the fibers is on the homeowner more than the installer. Reflected heat off glass is also worth checking on a screen enclosure with a west-facing house wall nearby, since a lanai traps heat differently than open yard does.

Questions people ask

Can turf go over an existing Alafaya pool deck without removing the concrete?

Yes. Turf installs directly over sound concrete with a drainage underlay underneath it and glued edges at the screen frame, since there's no soil there to nail into. The concrete itself doesn't need to come out first.

Why did grass never grow on my screened lanai in the first place?

A screen roof blocks enough direct rain and light that ordinary sod struggles to establish there even before foot traffic and pool splash are factored in. That's a lanai problem more than a species problem, and it's why the strip usually needs turf rather than a different grass.

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