Pools & Spas
JED Pool Tools (Scranton, Penn.) offers a three-tier wall-mounted pool fountain featuring a flower petal design. The fully adjustable fountain spray height and direction, make it an ideal addition to any swimming pool, enhancing the outdoor living area with beautiful arcs of water and the peaceful sounds of the spray while relaxing poolside. The fountain hooks directly into 1-3/4” threaded return fittings. To learn more, click here.
The pool and spa industry recently lost one of its founding fathers and most influential figures, the magnetic, always colorful and sometimes irascible, Al Rizzo. His career building pools spanned more than six decades, during which time he doggedly worked to unify and elevate the industry he loved.
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Rico Rock was recently asked to provide its GFRC panels for a large waterfeature for an even grander lagoon made by the Chilean firm, Crystal Lagoons, a company that has set records around the globe for creating the largest recirculated swimming pools ever built. The result is a stunning feature on the “shore” of a Texas housing and resort development that offers luxury in a dynamic recreational setting.
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Vanishing edges and other water-in-transit details remain among the most popular design elements in custom pools. Moving water over an edge can be a powerful aesthetic element, one that expands the perception of space and enhances reflection. Taking advantage of those qualities requires mastering the technical specifics.
Regardless of style, scale or budget, watershape design in one way or another is about forging connections with the surroundings, especially in the presence of natural beauty. Making those natural connections by way of orchestrating human experience is a philosophy that has driven some of history’s greatest designers and continues to resonate today.
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Lazy Rivers are among the most complex systems found in residential settings. In this installment of Direct Connections, builder Scott Payne details a recent backyard river project that pushed him and his company beyond their comfort zone, but one that yielded a treasure trove of knowledge and a river that takes the clients for a joy ride.
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Commercial pools must conform to a variety of safety and operational requirements beyond those promulgated in the residential segment of the industry. The ubiquitous 3-bend handrail is no exception. As Dave Peterson explains, even this simple design sometimes fails in implementation -- but help is on the way with this nifty and useful detail.
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Watershape University proudly introduces its most comprehensive online educational offering to date – CON 2211: Essential Pool Construction Workshop. It’s all about understanding essential construction processes needed to competently construct swimming pools, and other concrete structures that contain decorative and/or recreational water.
Providing online content has become a necessary preoccupation for educators throughout society. Knowing that the watershapes industry is overrun with demand and facing severe labor shortages, Watershape University has stepped into the breach with a host of digital, mostly live online courses, such as Advanced Fluid Engineering and the parade of topical Wolfpack Webinar Wednesdays. Collectively these offerings have necessarily replaced in-person instruction during the pandemic.
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Deploying its slat-based automatic cover, Aquamatic Cover Systems recently completed work on a massive existing pool on a college campus where administrators were looking for a state-of-the-art way to conserve both water and energy, all with the touch of a button.
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One of the biggest and most common mistakes watershapers can make, cautions builder Dave Penton, is projecting their own financial perspectives onto their clients. It’s a misstep that can, he says, lead to an errant assumption the customer is either unable or unwilling to pay for something that might seem extremely expensive to most others.
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