solutions
Whenever we approach a pond design/installation project, we are mindful of the fact that a big part of our mission is to make the result as trouble-free as possible for our clients. It is never our intention to mess with their good moods, nor is it our practice, if things need adjusting later on, to avoid digging in as deep as may be necessary and finding a once-and-for-all solution to whatever the problem might be. The project on display in this set of four brief videos is living proof that
Picture this: You've just completed the installation of a beautiful new swimming pool - a real step up for the home and its backyard. The clients had their hearts set on its dark-gray interior finish: They'd heard it would help warm the water on sunny days, and they liked the thought that the pool would look more like a beautiful lagoon than a pale swimming hole. The plaster crew
I can't begin to count the number of times our watershaping writers have explored the topic of travel, either as the source of clearer thinking or for the inspirational value of seeing how others have addressed specific design, engineering or construction challenges - or how Mother Nature
Among all of the creatures who haunt the dreams of watershapers, I can’t think of any worse than gophers — especially when those gophers collude with clients who also happen to be attorneys. Not long ago, I had the lovely experience of being abused by both — first on the job site by the small, fur-bearing rodents, then in court by
On a recent trip to Spain, Paolo Benedetti and his family took a side-trip to Portugal and happened on some Roman ruins that opened his eyes to a whole new set of possibilities. Here, in a most unusual ‘Solutions’ piece, he describes his encounters with the technologies used to heat an ancient residential indoor swimming pool as well as a collections of pools that made up the public-bath system for a seaside outpost of the Roman Empire. As a pointed expression of the growing global concern over the earth’s changing climate, lots of my clients these days are asking me about alternative methods for heating their pools. It’s a reasonable concern, and I don’t think it will be going away anytime soon. Part of the problem in answering these questions is that neither I nor my clients want to go out on technological limbs and invest in leading-edge or green ideas that have yet to prove themselves. The rest of it probably has to do with the phenomenon of
Automatic swimming pool covers are wonderful in a number of ways: They increase safety, save energy, limit evaporative water losses, keep debris out of a pool and can even reduce chemical consumption. As a watershaper, I want these devices to be trouble-free so they will perform with nothing more than routine maintenance and my clients can
With water-in-transit effects becoming more and more popular, increasing numbers of watershapers find themselves in need of external tanks to give these systems the surge capacity they need to function at peak efficiency. Here, Paolo Benedetti discusses his preferences when it comes to setting up his surge tanks – and defines a number of issues designers and builders should consider in making them both reliable and serviceable. As a rule, the surge tanks used in
Striving to avoid anything that might compromise the visual integrity of his projects, Paolo Benedetti is always on the lookout for ways to conceal drain heads, skimmer lids and other undesired intrusions. Here, he takes aim at spaside controls, describing a quick, effective means of removing them from view by hiding them in a niche topped by a lid made from the same material as the coping or decking that surrounds the spa. One of my pet peeves is
On many pool projects, the excavation phase often calls for the addition of competent fill to establish a foundation solid enough to support a concrete structure. That extra step can be both laborious and expensive, observes watershaper Paolo Benedetti, who uses this fresh entry in his new series on sensible solutions to common technical problems to describe a time- and money-saving alternative to standard methods of soil remediation.
