Touches of Humility

One of the things I love about my chosen profession is that no two days are exactly alike: Instead of installing the same design in the same way day after day, I’m constantly forging ahead, taking new paths, moving in new directions.

With these explorations come many opportunities to learn new techniques and work through new ideas. And I like the fact that I’ve built a reputation as someone who enjoys pushing the envelope and trying out approaches I haven’t used before – even if it means I’m steadily finding new ways to mess things up.

At times, my willingness to go out on limbs puts my staff on edge. I love the looks on their faces when I say “Today we’ll be trying something new” and that, as a result, “I’ll be on site with you for this one.”

The downside of all this is that I have a tendency to go things alone and not ask for help from anyone. There are a couple reasons for this, the first being that I’m both independent and stubborn. I’m also curious about the way things come together and work and like to try to figure them out on my own. Finally, I like the fact that, if things go haywire, I have only myself to blame.

Using this approach, I’ve learned some key lessons (the need for extra space for upper pond overflows into lower ponds, for example, or for proper calculation of flow rates for waterfalls or how not to use a backhoe to set large stones on the bottom of a pond) and have generally been satisfied with the solutions and skills I’ve developed.

LEARNING FLOW

Through these many years, I’ve built lots of watershapes, mostly of the naturalistic kind, and have details such as bubbling boulders and overflowing urns down pat. As I discussed in my August 2009 “On the Level,” I’m not averse to using items such as rainchains and even tubas if that’s what’s needed to produce desired effects.

In most cases, the calculation of flow rates and volumes (and hence the sizing of pumps) is fairly straightforward: For the most part, all I do is go big and valve down as necessary.

In virtually all past cases, I’ve used high-efficiency submersible pumps, which are very predictable and easy to use – so much so that only rarely have I gone wrong by going big. In fact, I have so much experience with these devices that I almost always make the right choice the first time through, even in situations where the complexity of the system should give me pause.

That isn’t to say I haven’t encountered a few problems through the years: It’s just that I’ve been able to extract myself from the pickles I’ve gotten myself into without anyone’s help. (Have I mentioned that I’m stubborn and not always willing to consult the experts?)

Quite honestly, the reason I’ve gotten away with this is that there’s not much on the landscape side of watershaping calling for large-scale engineering. Indeed, just about the only time I feel compelled to get help is with larger retaining walls, where I quite dramatically let my clients know that I’m bringing in an expert to help design a wall because failure could be, well, quite dramatic. When I call in such an expert, I know that my most important task is to listen attentively so I can apply the advice I’m given fully and accurately.

So now, as you might have guessed, I want to tell a story – a somewhat embarrassing one, in fact – about what can happen when habit and residual stubbornness get in the way even when you see the need to call on outside expertise.

You may remember from my August column on small waterfeatures that I once installed a group of three scuppers made from chunks of Bluestone protruding from a stone wall. This feature and the private terrace on which it was installed were in fact a small part of a much larger project that included a patio and stairway made of large Bluestone slabs interrupted by ribbons of colored glass (lit from below in some areas) as well as an elaborate waterfeature.

For the most part, this project was all things I could have done in my sleep. The waterfeature I’ll describe just below, however, was a different matter altogether.

SIMPLE ENOUGH?

Setting the scene, there was an elevation change of about 30 inches from the home’s level down to the patio. My plan was to build oversized, three-foot-deep steps in Bluestone and glass as the transition. When my clients and their guests reached the patio level but before they reached the patio itself, they would walk over a wide, L-shaped, trough-style waterfeature, set with more of the Bluestone.

Within the trough were to be six three-by-four-foot Bluestone slabs floating on concrete piers. Two of them would be for walking; the other four were to be core-drilled in random patterns (six holes per stone), and water was to bubble up through them.

I love the concept, and I’m certain those of you who make hydraulic calculations on a daily basis would see this as a piece of cake. But for me, this was one of those times I was forging into new territory – and I knew I needed some help. So I swallowed my self-reliant pride, picked up the phone and called Skip Phillips of Questar Pool & Spa in Escondido, Calif., whom I’d met through my participation in a variety of Genesis 3 programs.

Given the unusual hydraulic arrangement (for me, anyway) and the need for an unusually precise concrete structure, I recognized that I was moving well beyond my comfort zone, needed to swallow my pride and had to ask others for help.

I explained the situation – my need for 24 one-inch holes to be fed with water from about 15 feet away via two-inch pipes that would pass through four manifolds that would step the lines down to the one inch size that would flow through the holes. I’d calculated a head of three feet to get the water bubbling up two inches over the stone. Finally, I asked my big question: “What pump do I use?”

I know Skip to be one of the most respected of all pool-hydraulics experts on the planet, so I knew that he wouldn’t steer me wrong. After a minute or two of silence, he said: “You want a flow rate of 120 gallons per minute using a high-head pump.” Being a math maniac, I immediately locked on to the 120 gpm figure, translating it to what was for me the more familiar figure of 7,200 gallons per hour.

As noted above, I work almost exclusively with submersible pumps and rarely with in-line pumps. This particular waterfeature pushed me out of my usual comfort zone and forced me to work with an in-line device placed in a separate underground vault. All very cool in my book – but all basically new to me. To show that I was still in control of the process, I went beyond Skip’s 7,200 gph recommendation and installed a pump rated at 11,000 gph, confident I could make things work.

With all of that hydraulics stuff settled, I moved on to installing the vessel.

All along, I had planned to tackle the trough myself. The plumbing was fairly complicated, but it was nonetheless pretty easy to do. Then came the concrete work: While I’ve done a fair bit of it through the years, I must confess that I’ve usually brought in trusted masons for complicated (or large-scale) projects.

WORDS TO THE WISE

But I really wanted to do this myself and show off my stuff.

So I sat down and thought through and calculated, re-calculated and calculated again to decide how to form the trough, how much rebar I’d need and how many yards of concrete would be involved. In doing so, I knew there was no room for error: The simple geometry of the feature would reveal the slightest miscalculation or the merest twist in a line.

I lost a lot of sleep over this as the job’s start date approached. Finally, with a week to go before moving on site, I paused long enough in my self-willed plunge into the abyss to listen to someone else – my business partner, Sharon Coates (who, lucky for me, also happens to be my wife).

She had been suggesting to me for months that I needed to bring in our long-trusted gunite-pool collaborator, Gary Bednarcyk of Design Pool & Spa (Fairport, N.Y.). My will softened by lack of sleep, I finally gave in and called Gary. As luck would have it, he was able to come in the following week to do the installation for us.

This took a tremendous load off of my mind and allowed me to focus on the plumbing for this project – and keep my hand in various other projects my staff was working on as well.

As I watched Gary and his crew form out the trough, set the steel and organize the plumbing runs, I recall silently thanking Sharon at least a hundred times for talking me into making that call. There comes a time when we just need to acknowledge our limits and allow others to help us – no matter how stubborn we might be!

The irony here is that I’ve always preached this message to anyone caught up in do-it-yourself fever – mainly not professional colleagues, but rather do-it-yourself-with-no-expertise-at-all clients. I let them know that they should step back and let experienced specialists do right by them. In this case, it took Sharon to remind me of my own preaching, and I’m glad she did.

Once the trough was poured, we did the final waterproofing (using a black liquid rubber) and built out the series of manifolds. I was excited at the prospect of finally hooking up the pump and seeing the bubblers in action, pushing up water to flow over the Bluestone slabs.

I knew going in that, given the various distances from the pump to each stone, I would need to do some adjusting of the valves, but I was confident that within a few minutes each bubbler would be performing just like the others.

MISSED STEP

Finally, the moment of truth: I turned on the pump.

The bubblers in the stone closest to the pump looked great, but there were only dribbles of water coming out of the next closest cluster and nothing at all from the other two. I adjusted valves, scratched my head, cursed occasionally and then scratched my head some more.

I had no answer, but my thoughts ran immediately to the fact that Skip had recommended a 7,200 gph pump and I’d gone with an 11,000 gph pump. Was that my mistake? Or was there a clogged line, or maybe a misaligned valve? I had no answer, so I started by pulling the pump.

This experience – and the simple fact that the results were outstanding and made my clients very happy – taught me lessons I won’t soon forget about valuing the skills and expertise of my colleagues.

Falling quickly into investigative mode, I staged an experiment: I went to my house and pulled the three-quarter horsepower pump off my pool. When I installed it on the waterfeature, the flow improved but still wasn’t right. I just couldn’t figure out what was wrong and paced and fretted over it for hours before finally breaking down and giving Skip Phillips a second call. Once again, he went silent to roll through his calculations and came back with the same answer: “You need a 120-gallon-per-minute high-head pump.”

Then it hit me: During our first conversation, I had I missed two critical words, high and head. The pump I’d used originally was a quarter-horsepower low-head pump, and my pool pump was just as inadequate to the task at hand: Neither had the power to run this waterfeature. Humbled but happy, I immediately ordered up the exact pump Skip had recommended, hooked it up, checked my lines and turned it on. Perfection!

Since that experience, I’ve learned to take my own advice: I do not hesitate to step back and allow more knowledgeable people to tackle tasks I have no business taking on myself. I feel silly for failing to heed advice I’ve so generously given to other people, but I’m bound to prove that this old pooch can learn new tricks.

Just because my fingers and sweat don’t touch every aspect of my projects, it doesn’t make a project any less my own. In fact, it’s reached the point where I actually enjoy sharing my work with others while giving them an opportunity to add variety to their usual project mix – and making me look great at the same time!

Bruce Zaretsky is president of Zaretsky and Associates, a landscape design/construction/consultation company in Rochester, N.Y. Nationally recognized for creative and inspiring residential landscapes, he also works with healthcare facilities, nursing homes and local municipalities in conceiving and installing healing and meditation gardens. You can reach him at [email protected].