beach entry

Dawn of the Swimming Pond
Ponds built for swimming are becoming more and more popular - at least they have been in our business. For the past 3-4 years, we've actively promoted recreation-style or swimming-style ponds and have experienced some strong success. Now more than half of our projects are designed and built with swimming in mind, and many of those installations stand among our finest efforts. It's similar in some respects to what we see in the swimming pool market where people are investing in their backyards so they can enjoy the
LED Bubblers from Custom Molded Products
Custom Molded Products (Newnan, GA) has added an eight-inch LED bubbler to its Brilliant Wonders…
#22: Flagstone Beach Entry
I'm a big fan of beach entries:  As I see it, they wrap at least five important design and usage issues up in one neat package. First, they provide easy access to the pool.  Second, that access is gradual, which many bathers prefer.  Third, they bring a bit of visual drama to the water's edge - and then repeat it where the slope breaks off into deeper water.  Fourth, they create an easy
Pooled Ideas
Lots of clients come to the design process for their watershapes with certain preconceptions.  Sometimes, they even have full-fledged and dearly held visions of what they want.   Every once in a while, that can be a good thing; other times, however, not so much.  But what I try to do regardless, each and every time, is
Custom Packages
When vinyl-liner pools first appeared more than half a century ago, they were offered as "standard" pools for middle-class consumers - plain, simple and relatively inexpensive compared to their concrete cousins. Back in the 1950s and '60s, these vinyl-liner packages had squared-off shapes, but as time passed and consumers demanded greater variety, models emerged with oval forms or Grecian-style ends; before long, there were kidney-shaped packages and even some
2013/9.1, September 11 — Amazing Dream Pools, Designing a Beach Entry, Dodging ‘Dead Spots’ and more
September 11, 2013 www.watershapes.com ESSENTIAL Carving in Jade For more than 25 years, architect Nick…
2013/9.1, September 11 — Amazing Dream Pools, Designing a Beach Entry, Dodging ‘Dead Spots’ and more
September 11, 2013 www.watershapes.com ESSENTIAL Carving in Jade For more than 25 years, architect Nick…
#7: Beach Entry
I know they’ve been around for quite a while, but in our marketplace, beach entries are the latest thing these days – maybe hotter than ever before. The enthusiasm makes sense:  Beach entries give bathers a way to dip into the water and take up a spot in the pool or on a lounge chair without making a full commitment to getting soaked.  Better yet, we get a lot of sun in Texas, and these spaces can easily be rigged with umbrella stanchions – a cool
Driving Home
It’s not often that a watershaper tackles a job that takes more than two years of complete, full-time effort, but that’s been the case for the project pictured here.  For nearly two and a half years, in fact, I devoted virtually all of my working life to this single backyard watershape environment, and as I’ve mentioned in previous articles, there were times when I wondered if I was crazy to get involved with a project of this scope. Indeed, to describe it simply as a “backyard watershape environment” is to fall miles short of conveying the complexity of the systems covered in two previous WaterShapes articles (“When Dreams Grow,” April 2008, click here; and “Layering the Experience,” July 2008, click here):  It was a monster project, and there were times I thought the beast had me at a distinct disadvantage. You know all about that, of course, if you’ve followed this sequence of articles, so I won’t belabor the point.  Here, we’ll wrap things up by letting the photographs tell most of the story – although I must say the images don’t quite
Layering the Experience
It’s a project I won’t soon forget, believe me. In the April 2008 issue of WaterShapes, I offered the first of what ultimately will be three articles on an enormously ambitious project I began working on more than two years ago.  In that span, I’ve found myself taking whatever solace I can from the fact that everyone who’s become involved with the project (or has even heard about it in any detail) concedes that it’s probably the most complicated backyard watershape they’ve ever encountered. Last time, I covered the scope of the project in general terms, outlining the design-development process and rolling through some of the more intricate details of the early construction phases.  This time, we’ll move along to take a close look at the multiple water systems and effects and the hydraulic approaches needed to make them all work.  (In thinking things through in preparation for writing this article, I began to suspect that there might be enough here to fill a small book; being a merciful soul, however, I’ll stick to the key points and keep things moving.) To recap briefly:  The project features