support
After a long, satisfying run, this will be the last blog I'll write for WaterShapes: With the next edition of this newsletter on April 8, that's a privilege I'll transfer to Eric Herman with gratitude and best wishes. While I have this chance, I have some additional thanks to
I've hesitated to bring it up, but you may recall that, last May, I wrote about finally getting around to updating our vintage-1983 pool and spa with a new interior finish and some cosmetic and equipment upgrades. I had every good intention of following through and indeed made some
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
We've come to the part of the installation process that's my personal favorite: finishing up the plant placement and setting the edges. This is, of course, part of every pond-installation project on one level or another, but with a frog pond, my approach is a little different. As you'll see in the video linked below (and may have noticed in previous installments), the profile of this frog pond is
The feature clients like most about custom pool slides – particularly those of the modular variety – is their tremendous flexibility: The average slide is about 15 feet long, but the sky truly is the limit, with elaborate installations stretching out across 30 or 40 feet in length. Slopes are generously variable as well, but there are obvious space considerations that come into play with larger-scale projects. A good rule of thumb for a desirable 20-degree slope: Every foot built up vertically generally requires about three feet of horizontal build-out. Obviously, this means that space availability is a major factor in slide design and construction. The great thing is, the basic procedures of slide installation do not vary much with size, so the process, once learned, is pretty straightforward and repeatable. Here, we’ll be focusing on what this means with
The great poet and philosopher John Donne once wrote, “No man is an island” – a wonderfully simple declaration that none of us is really alone and that we all exist in a world filled with others. There are exceptions, of course, and I’ve run into my share of loners who resist the notion that we are all interdependent on some level. But as I’ve moved through the world and have met people I perceive to be talented or successful in some way, it’s been my observation that they have substantial support systems of one sort or another. That support may come from a spouse, a life partner, a live-in companion or a boy- or girlfriend. Or it may come from
