By Mike Farley

This article concludes a little series I’ve been doing that feature bowls in association with my pool and spa designs.  The first two were about water bowls in very different applications.  This one is about fire bowls and, in greater detail, about materials you can put in them to cover the burners, disperse the flames and make them look good even when

By Mike Gambino

‘If there’s ever been such a thing as a match made in heaven, swimming pools and landscape lighting lay a strong claim to that perfection.’  That’s how Mike Gambino opened his Currents column in November 2009.

‘Separately, they take little-used spaces and transform them to all-day hubs of activity and sources of constant beauty.  Together, however, the magic

By Paolo Benedetti

There’s a common misperception among designers and builders whose projects carry them beyond a pool and spa and out into the landscape:  In large numbers, these professionals believe that low-voltage landscape lighting systems are perfectly safe for use in close proximity to the water.

The truth of the matter is that the National Electric Code (NEC) has defined an exclusionary zone of ten feet around pools and spas for these fixtures!

That’s right:  Even with low-voltage

It’s a simple fact:  No matter where you are on the globe, ultimately it’s dark exactly half the time.  So no matter how beautiful your watershapes may be, if you don’t fully consider lighting as a key component of your projects, you may be robbing your work of half its potential for pleasing your clients.  

That makes it a bottom-line issue, because lighting adds real value to most any watershape installation with a long list of benefits.  For starters, it extends the time a watershape can be used beyond daylight hours.  It also adds

By David Tisherman

I truly enjoy including shade structures in my designs.  Whether I’m working with an overhang, an arbor, a loggia, a pergola or some other structure (and, yes, they are all different), I see them as ways to create visual extensions of a house – and wonderful places to enjoy being next to the water.

There is, of course, as much art and skill to designing and installing the right shade structure as there is to setting up all of the other features of a great backyard.  Done well, a structure that projects out from a house will pull your eye from inside to outside while it provides relief from the sun.  Similarly, freestanding shade structures

I love the versatility of fiberoptic lighting:  The technology works equally well in conjunction with landscaping or architectural features, and because there’s no electrical current to worry about at the light fixtures themselves, they’re a natural around water.  

Better yet, you can use fiberoptics to create traditional point-light sources, or you can set them up as mellow bands of light over long stretches.  I don’t use fiberoptics on every job, but when the situation is right and the customer is willing, I’m eager to dig in and design a system that will wow them for years to come.

As is true with any lighting system, the main reason to use fiberoptics is

By Brian Van Bower

In recent years, I’ve noticed a tremendous increase in the demand for shade structures – so much so that it would seem the era of slathering on suntan oil and basking in the sun in search of a savage tan might be gone forever.

It’s an exciting trend that really expands the creative possibilities for watershapers working across a broad range of styles and pricing levels.  

And no one could be happier about that than me:  For one thing, I’m fair-skinned and burn easily; for another, adding

By Brian Van Bower

When we think about how the environments we create are used, the first image that probably comes to mind is one of people enjoying themselves in or near the water on a beautiful, warm afternoon.  That’s natural – and a vision that’s a big part of the watershape experience we set up for our clients – but it ignores the other half of the day when our clients are left to themselves with our work.  

The fact is that watershape owners are mostly working people who spend their days away from home earning their daily bread.  So despite the fact that we build these things

By David Tisherman

For the most part, the designers and builders of pools, spas and other watershapes visualize their projects in full sun, install them during daylight hours and seldom (if ever) see them after the sun goes down.  

That’s both a problem and a shame, and it’s reflected in the fact that the run of projects you encounter by mainline pool-industry folks – and, to a lesser extent, by people from the landscape trades – tend to treat the lighting of exterior spaces as an afterthought if it’s really thought about at all.

In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that

What started as a slow simmer has now come completely to a boil.

Ten years ago, precious few of our clients had little or no interest in setting up outdoor cooking areas to go along with their pools, spas and waterfeatures.  That’s certainly not the case today, when fully 90% of our clients want us to set up some sort of kitchen amenity as part of their deck and patio areas.

You don’t have to be a marketing genius to see what’s happening:  It’s great fun to