structural integrity
THE ESSENTIAL E-NEWSLETTER FOR WATERSHAPE DESIGNERS, ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS September 16, 2020 www.watershapes.com FEATURE ARTICLE…
I consider myself fortunate to work in a part of the country where the soil holds few mysteries. There's a lot of clay, which means we make our shells stronger than you typically do in the sandy soils of Florida, but we don't generally have the sorts of steep slopes where you have to worry about having a pool
There are few things in the world of watershaping as dramatic or devastating as a popped pool. On their way up out of the ground, they'll shatter decks and coping, break pipes and conduits and, often, leave cracked shells behind and generally make a terrible mess. They also lead to one big first question from the owner: "So can you make it go back down?" I'm pleased to report that none of the pools I've built has ever risen above its assigned grade, but I live and work in the south, often in areas where
It happens more often than it should: Even in times when trade shows and educational enterprises such as Genesis 3 all stress the importance of knowing the basic forces at work within and around pool shells, I am all too often called in to investigate cases in which a builder has made a large and careless mistake that can have disastrous consequences. The point these contractors are overlooking is that the bond beams of many (if not most) pool shells are engineered in such a way that
Through the years, I’ve seen plentiful discussions of the fact that geotechnical (or soils) reports are required for proper watershape engineering. And it’s not just about complex vanishing-edge or perimeter-overflow pools: It’s about all swimming pools, spas, fountains and waterfeatures. Let’s consider that case closed. But who exactly should
From its very first issue, this magazine has made one key point over and over again: Soil conditions determine the way a watershape’s shell is constructed; to achieve success in construction, the approach must be established by a competent engineer and followed on site. Through the years, numerous contributors to the magazine have described the process of placing watershapes on hillsides or dealing with soil conditions that lead to differential settlement. So far, however, relatively little attention has been paid to the challenges of working in locations where
