Post #101561 by Bwana Tiki on Tue, Jul 13, 2004 9:15 PM

Sorry to jump in so much but this stuff is my passion. Bongo makes very good points as far as structural aspects. I recently designed a pool with a strong Moorish influence. The deep end was formed in a facet. There were 2 octagons of different diameters, aligned and set at different elevations with the larger octagon at the higher elevation. The corners of the octagons join to form the facets, a very complex form. I had to be on site for the dig, the steel and the gunite shoot, and it was still like pulling teeth to get the crews to install the proper form and material and labor cost bore the brunt of the difficulties. The upshot is, more fluid shapes are more forgiving and cheaper to install. The problem with pool builders stems from template building system and an eye towards maximizing profit at the expense of quality. The most common way to make good money building pools is to build as many as you can and build them all essentially the same. The common procedure is to build to meet minimum legal requirements. This cookie cutter approach results in an affordable product that will perform to minimum standard for a good 5 or 6 years before it begins to develop problems, usually due to poor hydraulic planning. Commonly people end up with a shell they don’t like that well, oversized pumps, undersized plumbing, and ugly tile.

Did I mention that you can have a sand bottom pool…
A shallow bottom pool is a good candidate for a sand bottom. Volleyball anyone?