Pools & Spas
What happens when the water added to a newly plastered pool has had a chance to interact fully with its new surroundings? That's a big question, writes Kim Skinner -- one that has implications for the long-term appearance and maintenance of countless watershapes.
It was a great project: The client called us in to look at a sloping backyard for which his one and only wish was an environment that would be "organic and pre-existing" - that is, a composition that looked as though it had been there forever, long before the adjacent home entered the picture. That sort of look is our stock in trade at Outdoor Republic, a Pleasanton, Calif.-based firm that specializes in the use of artificial rock. As is often the case, we became involved after the homeowner had
When agitated or flowing water moves through the air, it loses carbon dioxide. That's particularly significant in systems with fountain jets, waterfalls or vanishing edges, observes Kim Skinner, with the loss affecting pH in ways that must be dealt with to avoid big problems.
Once U.S. designers and builders "discovered" vanishing edges - probably at some point in the 1980s, although the look emerged long before then with some forward-thinking architects and watershapers - we've never let this highly visual design detail go. I use these edge effects in my designs all the time, and setting them up in the best way possible has
Devising an approach to the application of fields of glass tile to complex surfaces is never simple, but when your goal is to do so while minimizing cuts and eliminating any visual "tics" that might stand out like sore thumbs when the work is done? That's taking the work to a whole different level. The project under discussion here, built in Gilbert, Ariz., offered this sort of challenge twice - once in a large entryway waterfeature, and again in the backyard with an outsized
The fun thing about working on spec houses is that, every once in a while, you run into a client who truly wants to blow the doors off - in the best way possible, of course. That was certainly true here: The home is right on the water on one of the islands in Biscayne Bay where Miami's elite prefer to live, and the eventual asking price for the property was in the $26 million range, give or take. It's an area where few
In most backyard swimming pool projects, we install the drainage systems for decks after the swimming pool's plumbing, basically because the pool plumbers use big trenchers that will likely destroy the small drainage plumbing if