excavation
Some of the most intriguing projects begin with an element of mystery. I received a call from a prominent local designer who informed me that he was putting together a Dream Team for a special client and a special site - but for now, no name would be attached: All we were to receive was a reference number (15-LLC) and a location along with a preliminary plan and some photographs. I wasn't alone in receiving this preview: Other top-tier exterior-design professionals had been
We've participated in the construction of lots of great golf courses through the years, but this one was something special. It started for us at Pinnacle Design (Palm Desert, Calif.) with a call from one of the world's top golf-course architects, Ted Robinson, Jr., who let us know that we had to rush to prepare a presentation for a client in South Korea. As he explained the situation, if we couldn't win over the chairman of the conglomerate that was building the 27-hole course, the job would go to
For me and my business in around 2008, this project was a real rite of passage. At that point, pool-construction and shotcrete-application companies like ours were well established and had lineages stretching back to the 1950s. Just the same, we were having a hard time gaining recognition from architects, landscape architects and developers who were pursuing quality, prestige construction. The irony is, my own firm had
What we have here is essentially three stories rolled into one. Partly, it's about what happens when a well-established company steps beyond its comfort zone with a major renovation project that involves an unusually large set of unknowns. It's also about what can happen to a property when an old, large, man-made pond system breaks down, time passes and the space reverts to a wild, natural state. And it's about what's involved in pulling a failed
This is the story of the rebirth of a pool - and then some. It all started when I was contacted by a homeowner who was in what I'd call perfectly reasonable distress: His swimming pool was a mess, he told me, surrounded by cracked decking, a crumbling slide structure and a deteriorating fireplace. He'd already spent a bundle on piers and other fixes recommended by engineers, hoping to
The lessons we've covered in this long sequence of articles have typically revolved around single, key errors and have generally called for commonsense (and often simple) remedies. In the world of pool construction, however, there are situations in which the problems are far more complex, often rising from multiple missteps and clusters of intertwined failures. This is one of those situations, and it has to do with a basic pool/spa combination in a brand-new housing development. Although the pool contractor charged only $35,000 for the installation, the associated legal
New Holland Construction (Racine, WI) has introduced the E55BX mini-excavator, a short-radius unit that offers…
We love working on projects we can record and share through the Internet. At The Pond Digger (Yucaipa, Calif.), we've always believed that these videos help our prospective clients make informed decisions about what they want to do in their backyards. That's why we generally keep them pretty basic. At the same time, we've always believed that our videos have value in a professional context, particularly for
