sealing
Yards Park is a wonderful open space in the Capitol Riverfront neighborhood of Washington, D.C. One of its main attractions is in the middle block of the park, where you'll find a grand watershape with a footprint that covers an area spanning 20 by 135 feet. At one end, there's a fountain/waterfeature that immediately catches the eye. But the big draw
The fun thing about working on spec houses is that, every once in a while, you run into a client who truly wants to blow the doors off - in the best way possible, of course. That was certainly true here: The home is right on the water on one of the islands in Biscayne Bay where Miami's elite prefer to live, and the eventual asking price for the property was in the $26 million range, give or take. It's an area where few
Savio Engineering (New York, NY) makes expanding Black Foam for use in waterfalls. Designed to…
As the process of installing this beautiful little pond moves toward its conclusion, we find as always that we have lots of smallish details to consider - including the important task of creating a great look with the waterfall's spillway. This step may not take the strength or persistence or grand vision of some of the project phases covered to date in this video series, but I can assure you it takes both care and finesse - especially
Marine and zoological exhibits have always presented watershapers with a variety of specific technical challenges, not the least of which is devising a waterproofing system that will keep these vessels watertight, the viewing areas dry and the animal life safe. Here, Michael Mudrick and Elena Danke of Aquafin discuss a variety of lessons to be learned in pursuing these projects – and how they apply to other watershapes as well. Designing, engineering and installing watershapes for zoological and aquarium applications is never a casual exercise, especially when it comes to waterproofing. Not only do you have to find a product or combination of products that can accommodate various structural penetrations, adhere to all of the materials being used and, quite often, conform to irregularly shaped surfaces: Whatever material or system you select must also
When you ask people about transparent building materials, most people immediately think of glass. Glass is certainly stronger than most people realize, but it has never been an ideal structural material because of its weight, brittleness and structural limitations. With our acrylic products, by contrast, architects and other designers have found a material with which they can create substantial transparent structures that are much lighter and more versatile than those made with glass – and with a structural strength more than double that of concrete. R-Cast acrylic (as we call it) is indeed an amazing material: Its uses span from the obvious pools, fountains or aquariums to awesome signage and seemingly impossible structures and lighting (to mention a few possibilities). Its combination of optical clarity with safety, strength, flexibility and UV resistance has allowed an increasing numbers of designers across a range of disciplines to embrace the material as never before. There are several firms that provide acrylic materials to the construction marketplace, with
Next to the water itself, concrete is the most important and widespread of materials used in watershaping. Not only is it instrumental in creating the structures that contain water as well as the substructures that support them, concrete is also the stuff of which faux-rock panels, pre-cast or poured-in-place coping, pavers, all manner of stamped or textured decks and poured-in-place or block walls are made. Despite its omnipresence, however, concrete remains one of the most misunderstood of all watershaping materials in this sense: Because it is so durable in basic structural applications, there's a tendency to
In renovation projects, preparation of the pool's interior surface for a new finish is truly where the rubber meets the road - a key step in which what you've planned and what you actually do must come together. With this installment of "Details," we're doubling back to the Los Angeles project we left behind in October as we waited for tile to arrive from Italy. If you'll recall, the pool had been built in the 1920s and graces a property with a magnificent Gatsby-era home. As I mentioned at the outset of this interrupted sequence of columns, the homeowners have been extremely involved, always wanting to know as much as they possibly can about what's going on in their backyard. As I mentioned as well, the challenge
