Concrete Inevitabilities
I’ve come to the world of watershaping from a different perspective. Back in the 1960s, I worked for a company that built poured-in-place concrete homes in Florida.  Right from the beginning, I couldn’t help noticing the importance of waterproofing in the performance of these structures – or the consequences of not taking the potential for water intrusion seriously. My interest in this subject took on new significance in 1989, when I formed a Florida firm that conducted forensic analyses in all manner of structural failures as a service to
Building Toward Clarity
When my family started in the pool and spa service business some 25 years ago, it didn’t take us long to recognize that there was very little available to us by way of education about water chemistry – or, for that matter, about most of the other skills involved in maintaining pools, spas and other waterfeatures. That didn’t make much sense to us, even then.  After all, how could an industry devoted to the health, safety and comfort of millions of people function without addressing the need for standardized approaches to water maintenance or
Gardens for People
“Landscaping is not a complex and difficult art to be practiced only by high priests.  In any age of reason, it is the owner who . . . decides . . . the garden and the purposes for which it will be used.” These words from landscape architect Thomas Church’s seminal book, Gardens Are for People, ring as true today as they did when they were first published in 1955.  Gardens truly are for people, and while that’s manifestly an obvious statement, it seems to be a concept that insufficient numbers of today’s watershape and landscape designers fully grasp. That’s nothing new.  More than half a century ago, in fact, Church was motivated to
Meeting Minds
Let’s begin this discussion with a question:  What if you were so bad at your job that a person in a related field decided, for the good of his own business, he had to learn your business and replace you rather than cope with your incompetence?  Most people would say that this would be a justified response to the fact that you do lousy work. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how you look at it), this very thing is happening in the pool industry – or, more accurately, to the pool industry.  For years now and with increasing frequency, landscape architects have decided they’ve had enough and are entering the pool industry.  They are doing so because
Cross Connections
As I see it, watershaping is an activity in which multiple disciplines come together to design, engineer and construct decorative or recreational systems that contain and control water:  pools and spas, fountains, ponds, streams and waterfalls, interactive water systems – “everything from birdbaths to lakes,” as publisher Jim McCloskey is relentlessly fond of saying.   Those multiple disciplines encompass landscape architects and designers, pool designers and builders, architects, interior designers, environmental artists and a host of subtrades as well as adherents of various movements, from historic preservationists to professionals in the green industries. It’s a broad and exciting amalgam of interests, and my sense is that, as
Modern Landscapes for Living
By now, we all know that pools and certain other watershape forms have been around since ancient times. It’s my strong suspicion, however, that most of us who design and build backyard swimming pools today would fail a pop quiz about
NSPF’s Dr. Tom Lachocki
An Interview by Lenny Giteck In the six years since Dr. Tom Lachocki became CEO of the National Swimming Pool Foundation, NSPF has given more than $3.5 million in grant money for scientific research into aquatics, a figure that represents
Pond Filtration: The Basics
Want to know why creating healthy, low-maintenance ecosystems is so important to contractors who install naturalistic watershapes? It’s because the last thing any of us needs during the busy season is a phone call complaining about
Welcome to Our New Blog!
WaterShapes started 12 years ago as the result of a lengthy round of discussions between Eric Herman and me — an exchange of ideas that has
Test Your Knowledge #7
Where and when was the first modern indoor waterpark built?