My Dream Pool - Sort of
If I could have my pool done any way I wanted to, how would I do it?

Well OK - not really. We couldn’t go hog wild dreaming up everything we wanted in a
pool. If we did, there would be multi-levels
with negative edges, fountains, grottos, running streams, gas-powered fire
accents, fogging systems, vortex areas, swim jet streams, river/current lanes,
beach entries, underwater glass atriums, breakfast bars, tables, stools, ... You name it.
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First off, the cost obviously
would be prohibitive. But secondly, it
wouldn't fit. Notice the size of the back yard in the picture above. The distance between the back of the house and the
back wall is roughly about 20 feet. A 20 ft backyard depth. Yeah,
really. Pretty small and tight space. One thing that my wife insisted on when we were
looking for a house closer to my new employer, was a single-story five-bedroom
home. As we went in search of this
elusive beast, it was difficult to even find builders that did that kind of
layout anymore. When we finally found a
builder that had a layout we liked and in a neighborhood that we liked, they
were in the tail-end of building out
that neighborhood. As a result, there
were only standard lots left. I think
our lot turned out to be about 8500 square feet. Even our first home up in Mesa, AZ, which was smaller (1800
square feet vs. 3000 square feet), had a lot that was much bigger (about 10K
square feet). Anyways, the footprint of
a single-story five-bedroom home is humongous.
There’s very little backyard space to squeeze a pool in. We had to do our best.
Fortunately for us, the city of Chandler, AZ has relatively liberal
restrictions on building pools. The
main restrictions are:
1.
The water’s edge shall be a minimum of five (5) feet away from the property
line.
2.
The water’s edge shall be a minimum of five (5) feet away from
any window on the house. If the pool encroaches within this area, then
special tempered glass must be used for the windows. This is to protect
people if they should accidentally slip on a wet deck and fall into the window.
3.
A 6’ wood, masonry, or wrought iron perimeter fence should
enclose the pool area (fortunately, we have a masonry wall around our entire
house which qualifies).
4.
All entry ways into the pool area needs to be protected by a self-close
door or gate with a spring-loaded self-latching device. The doors need to open outwardly.
5.
All windows accessing the pool area must also be latched with a
minimum height of 54” to prevent small children from reaching it. The locks should be keyed.
6. While there are no restrictions where pool
equipment
I drew in some blue dotted lines in the
picture above to show you where the 5 foot setbacks are from the property lines
and the house edge lines. If you look
closely at those lines, there is not a whole lot of freedom in coming up with the
shape of the pool. The setback
restrictions pretty much dictated how it was going to be laid out. Actually, I feel pretty fortunate. I hear that in other city in the US, you
have to setback 10 feet from the property lines and your pool cannot take up
more than 10% of your total backyard space.
I would have had a nice green lawn right now had that been the case in
Chandler.
As I contemplated
the pool design, there were a myriad of different options
and decision points that needed to be evaluated. Should I
go with a pebble interior or plaster?
What kind of filtration system should I
go with? What about the chlorination
system? The cleaning system?
One other note - when I first started browsing through poolforum.com, I was
surprised at how many people were talking about vinyl and fiberglass shell pools
and trying to trade-off the pros/cons of each (along with gunite as well) when
deciding to build a pool. I had never encountered vinyl or fiberglass
pools in AZ. I don't know anyone who has anything BUT Gunite pools. I'm not sure why, but I'm guessing it has to do with the climate and
conditions in AZ. Anyways, I'm glad I had one less decision
to make in building this pool.
So ..... with all that out of the way, what else did I want?
·
Play Pool – first off, this pool is for the kids. Secondly, its for relaxation. I anticipate spending a lot of time in the
backyard once its done: relaxation, entertaining, playing with the kids,
working on my laptop, playing some volleyball or basketball. Nothing serious – just serious fun!! Because the kids are smaller, I didn’t want
to go too deep. I decided on a 3.5’ – 5’
– 4’ depth range to provide just enough mixtures of depths to keep it
interesting without messing up a good game of volleyball.
·
Waterfall - in Hawaii where I grew up, no one had water
features on their pools. I don’t know
why. I just never saw any. When I saw one for the first time here in
Arizona, I thought it was one of the most amazing things – in your own
backyard?? I knew that was the first
thing that was going to be on my list.
If you look at the bottom center of the plan above, you will notice four
large windows that line the area near the patio. These 4 windows provide a spectacular view into the backyard from
just about anywhere in the living room in the house. I purposely chose to have a larger waterfall (about 5 x 17 area)
as the centerpiece for the pool.
·
Pebble-Tec - also, being from the Hawaiian Islands, I really
miss the lush tropical look that the Islands present. To bring a taste of that back to the desert, I decided to go with
a lagoon-style pool with a pebble-tec interior with a Tahoe Blue color. I hear Tahoe Blue brings out the deep
tropical blue sea color that I’m after. I'm also installing some blue
tints on the pool lights to further accentuate the blue color of the pool.
·
Spa – what can I say?
If the backyard is for relaxation, how can it not include a spa? I want the setup to be aesthetically
pleasing as well as functional. I
decided on a raised spa so that the waterfall can flow into both into the pool
and into the spa. The water from the
spa would then overflow through the spa damwall back into the pool, giving it a
nice cascading look and feel.
·
Large First Step – my employer is one of the top high-tech
firms in AZ. As a result, they pretty
much keep on the bleeding edge as far as technology is concerned. I have broadband access into my company’s
intranet via VPN (Virtual Private Network).
My home is wired for CAT5 throughout the house. Once I setup my 802.11a Access Point, I can
go “work from home” sitting in my Chase Lounger on the first step (notice I
drew in the lounge chair into the picture) having a wireless connection from my
pool into my companies intranet. Pretty
sweet. Who says work isn’t fun? I also have an Accent Boulder halfway
submerged on that first step. I hope I
can get someone to drill out an area so that I can stick a tall glass into it. That would make it complete.
·
Accent Boulders – I think accent boulders are the thing that
separates good landscapes and great ones.
They make things look so much more rugged and natural. It takes away that artificial look. I purchased about 8 large accent boulders
for my front yard and I still get compliments about it to this day. They talk about my plant arrangement, but I really
think the thing that makes it look good are the accent boulders. The best compliment I got was from the owner
of a landscape company who lives in the neighborhood who was responsible for
doing about 40% of the landscapes in my sub-division. His right-hand man also gave me a great compliment on a separate
occasion. That was so cool.
Anyways, that's why I want them in the back as well. They add so much to
the natural beauty of the pool. They're especially great in make the
waterfall look bigger. By placing an accent boulder on either side of the
waterfall, it gives the illusion of extending the waterfall width by about 4-6
additional feet. They're also great at transition points of the pool, like
where the end of raised bond beams or near planters, etc.
·
Large bench near waterfall – for the kids. For fun.
·
Lots of decking – I want the backyard to be functional for
entertaining. On the left side of the
pool is a large deck area where I’d like to build a raised area for a BBQ and a
Wok. Also to the top of that is a
Beehive fireplace. All 3 items will be
driven by natural gas. I like to cook
Chinese food. If there’s one thing that
you need for good Chinese cooking, it’s a lot of heat. A high flame. Unfortunately, using high heat produces a lot of smoke. So unless you’ve got an indoor hood that has
the potential of sucking your pets out of the house, I figured it would be best
to cook outdoors. That way I can get
the flame as high as I want without worrying about burning down the house. The wok should be rated for about 20,000
BTUs so that should be plenty.
·
Lush Tropical Landscape – I’ll cover that in a later
article.
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