ARTICLES Archives - Page 107 of 312

He first became interested in computer-assisted design systems when they were still just a trade-show novelty, reports Barry Justus. But now, he says, he can't imagine developing his designs or communicating with his clients in any other way.

Thoroughly Modern

I followed a well-worn path when I started designing watershapes: I acquired a drafting table and worked at gaining proficiency in the use of pencils, protractors, scales, squares, various templates, colored markers and a multiplicity of other drawing tools as a means of communicating design ideas to my clients. To this day, I have great admiration for those who work quickly and decisively with these tools, but about ten years ago I was introduced to an array of digital design systems - and I've been

#17: Rolled-Edge Spa

In decades past, comfort wasn't typically uppermost in mind when spas were being designed and built in conjunction with swimming pools. Jet placements could be arbitrary, walls were almost always set at 90-degree angles to the seats and, perhaps least thoughtful of all, coping was set up pool-style, with grab edges that hit anyone tall enough to get on an amusement-park thrill ride somewhere in the back, shoulders or neck, making it difficult to relax and enjoy the experience. These days, fortunately,

Clearing the Shelves

For the past six years - ever since that fateful day in the spring of 2009 when I decided that my offsite storage space was far too inconvenient to be worth the monthly cost - I've been surrounded in my office by floor-to-rafters shelving stacked with back issues of WaterShapes. I love the old magazines, and despite the fact everything we ever printed is now easily available online, I still

The Aquatic Quiz #21

Security Guard Photographs Ghost at Swimming Pool

Seeing Nature

Over the holidays this past December, we broke with family tradition and, instead of gathering around tree and hearth as we've done as a family every year since 1982, all of us headed to the Big Island of Hawaii for an entirely new sort of celebration. My wife and I had been there once before, staying at what was then the newly opened Hyatt Regency Waikoloa for a meeting of the National Spa & Pool Institute's Board of Directors. (I recall that Skip Philips was chairman at the time.) After that meeting nearly 25 years ago, Judy and I had taken several extra days and motored around the island at a leisurely pace, staying in tiny motels and spending most of our time

They're wildly popular, writes Scott Cohen, but he's seen enough problems with salt-chlorination systems in his role as a construction-defects expert witness that he thinks it's wise to make homeowners aware of the possible drawbacks that can be associated with saline technologies.

Coping with Salt

In my work as a construction-defect expert witness, I've seen how damaging salty water can be to hardscape materials around pools and spas equipped with saltwater chlorination systems. It's so common that, personally, I now try to avoid using those devices on the watershapes I design and build. It's not that I think saltwater chlorination is intrinsically evil; instead, it's the fact I've seen so many different things go wrong with watershapes that have these systems that I decided some time ago that they weren't for me. It's often said that

Keyboard Exercises

Among the many things I like about working on WaterShapes.com and its companion digital newsletter is the opportunity it has given me to write. Back when I was with Pool & Spa News, I wrote opening editorials in just about every issue for nine years. That kept the engine going, but I wouldn't exactly describe the "Reflections" I wrote there as either free-wheeling or exactly

Faced with the challenge of fitting a lap pool into a relatively compact backyard space, Randy Beard used geometry to his advantage in crafting a perimeter-overflow/vanishing-edge pool and spa that aligns sweepingly with the homeowners' needs.

Formal Ease

These days, we do most of our work in the hills in and around Newport Beach, Calif. To describe the area as "affluent" is understating the case: For years now, even modest homes for sale in the area usually draw seven-figure prices - and the more modest the home, the likelier it is that it will be torn down and replaced with something larger and more elaborate. Through the past few years, we at Pure Water Pools of Costa Mesa, Calif., have been called to many of these built-out properties by homeowners who

The Aquatic Quiz #20

County to Create Pool Network Safe for People with Dementia

A Critical Eye

I spend a lot of time looking at watershapes: Big and small, elaborate and simple, recreational and decorative, calm and eruptive, distant and interactive. In too many ways to count, they're so much nicer now than when WaterShapes started paying attention to them 16 years ago. I think back to a time when I was an occasional