ARTICLES Archives - Page 108 of 315

His clients wanted watershapes without chemicals, and Randy Beard was determined to deliver. Long intrigued by the way koi ponds work, he tinkered until he developed a simple system that fills his pools with pure, clear water -- and makes a home's plants happy, too.

Chemical-Free? Really?

It started a couple years ago: More and more often, I was meeting clients who wanted great pools and spas that involved no chemical enhancement - just the water itself. These were generally people who had studied up. They had rejected dichlor and trichlor and were opposed to any kind of cyanurate presence. They'd considered saltwater pools until they figured out that chlorine was part of the package. They'd looked at ozone and were concerned

Shaken Loose

Every time there's an earthquake in any populated place on the planet, my heart and thoughts go out to those who made it through the experience and to the families and friends of those who didn't. The recent deadly quake in Nepal is another in a long line of seismic events that trigger memories of my own experiences when the ground has started

The Aquatic Quiz #25

Caroline the Black Lab Causes Pickup Truck to Plunge into Pool

Want to know how to optimize the technology you're using to run your watershape-design software? Finding the answer, reports Chris Adamczyk, is as easy as joining the video gaming community and picking the brains of the tech-savvy teens you're trying to keep up with.

The Evolving Studio

I've been working with digital design technology for nearly ten years at this point, and I have to say that the rate of change with both the software and the hardware has been rapid enough to make a casual observer's head spin. And that's fine, because those of us who've been involved with it from the beginning have come to expect no less. In my case, however, I didn't start out with computer design. In fact, I'd been working as

Face Time

A few weeks back, I paid a visit to Santa Rosa, a city in the heart of California's Sonoma County wine appellation. I wasn't there to taste wine, surprising as that may seem. Instead, I went to visit with Jim Wilder, a regular WaterShapes contributor and fountain specialist who's spent his career working up and down the valley, quite often

#18: Eased-Edge Coping

These days, I run into lots of clients who want clean, crisp detailing when it comes to everything associated with their backyard spaces - pool, spa, patio, decks and outdoor kitchens included. They're after works of visual art that, when not in active use, can be seen from inside the house as a continuation of the elegant, well-appointed interior spaces they've set up so thoughtfully. Sometimes, this means that

Among all the problems he's observed as an expert witness, Scott Cohen is particularly aware of what can go wrong when water starts moving where it's not wanted. Often it's a cosmetic issue; sometimes, however, serious damage can result -- and can be costly to address.

Water Gone Wild

Last time, we looked at an instance in which migrating water presents mostly aesthetic challenges - scale formation, evaporation residues and other hassles that simply make a watershape look worse than it should. This time, we'll look into a case where the migrating water not only made the watershape look bad, but was also doing structural damage to a nearby deck and, ultimately, to the pool shell itself. It's a cautionary tale that should make any contractor

The Swimming Imperative

I spend a lot of time wandering around the web looking for information to share with followers of WaterShapes.com's "Around the Internet" and "Aquatic Health, Fitness & Safety" sections and of the "The WaterShapes Web Café" feature that appear in each edition of the WaterShapes newsletter. This browsing can be fun and entertaining, but there's also

The Aquatic Quiz #24

Swimmers 'Make the Best Lovers' According to New British Study

Outcroppings

We love working on projects we can record and share through the Internet. At The Pond Digger (Yucaipa, Calif.), we've always believed that these videos help our prospective clients make informed decisions about what they want to do in their backyards. That's why we generally keep them pretty basic. At the same time, we've always believed that our videos have value in a professional context, particularly for