soils reports Archives - Water Shapes

Called back to a pool he'd bid on unsuccessfully ten years earlier, William Drakeley found that the winning contractor had fallen short in several ways. It was now up to him to persuade an extremely reluctant client to start all over again, this time with a more suitable approach.

Hard-Won Beauty

As we were wrapping up a WaterShapes article called "Working at Water's Edge" back in the fall of 2018, it occurred to me that there was another story to be told about one of the projects highlighted in the text. In that article (click here), a pool I wrote about was set up on the edge of a large, manmade lake. I briefly noted that I'd been called to the site as a consultant after having seen the place several years earlier as a designer/builder who hadn't won the contract. In this article, I'll go back to my initial contacts with the client and tell a fuller story of a trying relationship that, slowly and with great difficulty,

Instead of using soils and structural engineers to prepare plans tailored to a site's specific needs, builders sometimes order generic engineering plans and hope everything will work out for the best. That's a debatable decision, writes Paolo Benedetti, for reasons he lays out here.

Weighing the Options

In recent years, I've witnessed or participated in enjoyable conversations about the fact that pools, spas, fountains and other waterfeatures are now more complex than they've ever been. What I've heard and seen less often, however, is equivalent bantering about the fact that engineering plans for such projects must keep pace if these elaborate watershapes are to perform - as they should - well into the future. In this context of progress and success, it should trouble watershapers that large numbers of builders persist in relying on generic structural plans when it's time to break ground on their projects - even on those that

Given the opportunity to dream big on behalf of a willing client, Shane LeBlanc delivered a trio of watershapes that go far beyond the ordinary -- including one with a 100-foot-long vanishing-edge wall that brings a slice of Las Vegas liveliness to a laid-back Louisiana riverfront.

Layering Experience

In advancing my career as a watershape designer, I've put major stock in education to give me an edge. I've taken multiple courses in computer-assisted design, for instance, along with all sorts of technical-skills classes to keep me up with what's current in the field. But I've noticed as well that the accumulation of experience is a huge additional asset, mainly because it reflects what I've already tried, survived and learned from - but also because having done some of the things I've tackled through the years gives me

Integrity on Deck

I was recently involved as an expert witness in a case where, among many other flawed parts of the project, I came across a distinctly substandard pool deck. The grout was cracking all over the place, and most of the flagstone veneer was either loose or in the process of breaking free of the substrate. The diagnosis didn’t take long: All I did was dig back a part of the lawn at the edge of the patio, and the not-so-surprising truth revealed itself.