competition pool
Every so often, our company is confronted by the belief among certain design professionals that, as it is used by the pool industry, shotcrete is simply not viable for use as structural concrete in high-profile watershaping projects. The assumption, I’ve learned, is that the pool industry is filled with contractors and specification writers who know little about the material and therefore tend to produce substandard results. I could argue the merits of the case, but let it suffice to say that the upshot of this widespread belief is that institutions and commercial clients hesitate to use shotcrete and instead prefer cast-in-place concrete, which they perceive as having greater quality and reliability in watershape applications. We at Drakeley Swimming Pool Co. (Bethlehem, Conn.) recently encountered exactly that prejudice: A private high school that was in the process of designing and building a state-of-the-art aquatic center and an
A small town set in the suburban vastness of southern California, the city of La Mirada seems an unlikely setting for a leading-edge aquatics facility – let alone the grand one that now occupies 19 prominent acres within the city’s sprawling regional park. We were first introduced to the project in September 2005 by the city’s public works director, Steve Forster, who invited us to sit in on a meeting to discuss the city’s ambitions. At this gathering, key city officials let us know that they’d already secured much of the $30 million plus the project would require and expressed their desire to begin moving right away with a very aggressive project schedule. What was needed now, they told us, was a company that had
