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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Where and when was the first modern indoor waterpark built?
Meeting Minds