engineering
Pond-free waterfall systems are a conceptual oddity: At first thought, they don't seem as though they can in any way appear natural, with their long streams of cascading water disappearing into voids instead of flowing across the large sort of pond that is so familiar to most of us in natural settings. But I'm among those who like these odd watershapes - and I think much of it has to do with the fact that we
Back in 2001, I took a job working for a high-volume pool-construction firm as one of its 30 salespeople. For the first four years or so, I did all of my design work by hand. Quantity was always king in that operation, so I never even left the office: Someone would hand me a set of plans and I'd start working, despite the fact I'd never walked the site, seen its surroundings or had any
Safe-Rain (Toledo, Spain) has introduced Waterboy Plus, a dry-deck fountain kit made of stainless steel…
It's rare, but it happens: Every once in a while, a client's desires align perfectly with the capabilities of a watershape designer and builder - so much so that the collaboration becomes a study in how powerful creative harmony can be. This sort of synergy was a hallmark of the hillside project under discussion here. Early in the process, we were brought aboard to work on an unusually large spa as well as a small
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I can sometimes look like a rock outcropping myself: Whatever it is, I love working with big chunks of stone in my pond projects. More than any single design element I can deploy, there is no other component that's more important when it comes to making my work look as though it's been there
I started out on the construction side of the pool industry nearly 20 years ago. Back then, I probably experienced the building process a good 500 times, picking up insights into what determined the level of success of each project. As time passed, I found myself being drawn to the design side: I saw it as a way to put all of those insights to good use; more important, I knew it was where I could do the most good for homeowners. In making the transition, I
David L'Heureux For much of human history, those with power and wealth have been willing to put both on display in the places they choose to reside. There are palaces and great houses all over the planet, each one testifying to the grandeur of its owner and the talents of the architects and designers brought in to turn grand visions into actual structures and garden spaces. Often, those commissioning these conspicuous projects were members of
'Every single project I design and build,' wrote David Tisherman near the top of his Details column in July 2005, 'is fully, individually engineered, and I refuse to make any assumptions on my own about what might be needed in a set of plans to create a sound structure. If any builder anywhere thinks that he or she knows enough to get by without support from a structural engineer, well, that's just asking for trouble.' 'I know what I don't know, frankly, and I sleep well at night knowing that
It's not what I'd call a common request these days, but every now and then I come across homeowners who want to be able to sit in the water to enjoy a cool drink or even a meal. It gets hot in Texas, after all, and these folks figured that relaxing under an umbrella around an in-pool table would be a great way to beat the heat. It's actually a decent concept, but just as is the case with the stools we sometimes set up for swim-up bars, the designer or builder needs to
