equipment pad design

The homeowners had waited decades to revamp their backyard and came to the project with high expectations about how their new spa, fountain and deck would look. Now it was up to Grant Smith to solve a few tricky technical issues while making the most of the distant views.

Expansive Vision

It all started in the years following World War II, when large parcels of undeveloped suburban land were carved into tracts in which, all too often, as many homes as possible were included to accommodate huge population influxes. In a nutshell, this is why so many of the lots in places like southern California are relatively small. We do lots of our work in these "bedroom communities," and I wish I had a nickel for every time I've been asked to shoehorn full-featured pools and spas into tiny backyards with limited access. It can be done - we at Aqua-Link Pools & Spas (Carlsbad, Calif.) frequently tackle small-yard projects - but each of them carries

Encountering a backyard with a good bit of room but a super-wide easement, Tanr Ross dug deep to optimize the space for a pair of design-oriented clients. It took plenty of creativity to organize all the features, he says, but now it works -- both functionally and aesthetically.

Access Excess

It's a small backyard with a Texas-size easement - and a good thing that I like challenges, because designing a project for this outdoors-loving family in Katy was an exercise in making a whole bunch of ideas fit comfortably within an unusually constrained space. As we learned, their gated-community property is separated from the street directly behind it by a tall boundary wall. This meant that there was no backing parcel to share