Pools & Spas
Swimming continues to grow as a preferred method of exercise and physical therapy for people of all ages, with commercial aquatic facilities seeing healthy increases in patronage year after year. And whether it's water aerobics, resistance training, water walking or aquatic yoga, there's now much more to this popularity than traditional swim lessons for newcomers and laps or competitions for those with developed swimming skills. With this popularity comes
One of the things I like most about working in the watershaping business these days is how clever and creative designers and builders have become at what they do. It's not just the big details such as vanishing edges, play-pool configurations, sun shelves or swim-up bars. And it's about more than beach entries, grottos, laminar jets and cool spillways. Those are all great, every one of them, but what I'm talking about here is the attention to the small things - the subtle ways more and more watershapers are finding to make
It definitely helps to have a good reputation within the local design community. In this case, an architect I've known for years and have worked with on numerous occasions - someone with whom I've gotten so familiar with on the job site that we've become good friends - called me in to meet clients who needed help beyond the work he was doing on their house. He thought we'd be a good fit, and he was right: From our first meeting, the clients and I
I'd hazard the guess that most experienced pool designers and builders have run into this scenario: The clients want a pool, and they also want a spa - but not just any spa will do. Through the years, these clients have been in the attached spas of friends' inground concrete pools, but this is not what they want. That's because they've also experienced portable spas and prefer their performance: superior jet action, diverse seating arrays and options, more features and
Sometimes, things come together in just the right way. I'd been called in to a multimillion-dollar property with a large, three-year-old house on it, right next to the Chattahoochee River on the northwestern fringe of Atlanta. There was an existing pool, but the homeowners wanted something new - a composition that befitted the home's elegance and said more about
As a general contractor, I am steadily bombarded by information about new products that claim they will forever change the way I look at whatever category the novel gizmo occupies. This sort of marketing has turned me into a skeptic whenever I see something new come along, basically because experience and communication with other contractors have showed me that few of these novelties ever fully live up to the hype. Some contractors respond to this slippery situation by sticking solely with what they know, which, in my view, is
Through many years of applying small pieces of tile to the complex sorts of surfaces found in pools, spas and other waterfeatures, I find most of the challenges (and opportunities) come in figuring out intersections - that is, places where planes meet, contours change and, in general, a whole lot of attention needs to be paid to getting things just right visually. We at Rock Solid Tile (Calabasas, Calif.) have been fortunate to find ourselves involved in many projects in which
There are few things prettier than the classic sky blue that results from the combination of white plaster and clear water. In recent times, however, amazing and even startling colors and color combinations are appearing within swimming pools and other watershapes courtesy of either integrally colored plaster, white plaster paste coupled with colored aggregate or colored paste with a colored aggregate. Various textures are also available courtesy of these finishes, with surfaces ranging from
‘One of the skills of a good designer is the ability to recognize those situations in which less is more.’ With those words, David Tisherman opened a landmark 2002 column that began changing the way the watershaping world looked at spa spillovers and other pool-related cascades. *** ‘Using [an] understated approach helps the designer or builder avoid
As a landscape architect, I generally approach projects with a balanced view of a space's potential. I weigh all of the possible elements in the prospective design, envisioning pools, spas, decking, lighting, shade structures and plantings as well as the flow from the inside of the home out into the backyard and the uses to which the homeowner intends to put the space. Every once in a while, however, the unique features of
