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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Indoor Pool with Slide & Waterfall

"In the pool room, it is all real stucco. It is all hand-applied
stucco on all of the walls. A rough coat was applied to the w
and then we came in and did our finished stone work. "


LOCATION: This indoor pool is located in a northern New Jersey town and was honored with a Gold Medal in the Northeast Spa & Pool Association’s (NESPA) 2007 Design Awards Competition in the Outstanding Achievement in Design & Building Concrete category.

BUILDER: he project was designed and constructed by Creative Master Pools, Inc., 410 Ring-wood Avenue, Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, which is owned by Ron and Ruth Aveta. Ron got into the pool business 30 years ago to satisfy two of his passions—to build “things” and to find an outlet for his creative l are. Pool building, with its infinite variety of design, concept, setting, ma-terials use and engineering challenges, meshed well with his talents as is readily apparent in the beautiful indoor pool pictured on these pages.

 Many years ago, Ron took a summer job with a swimming pool builder. “he builder that I
was employed by did great work and I felt that this was an industry where I could excel as well. Besides wanting a business where I could build and be creative, I needed a third element—to have fun. For me, pool building is fun. I was with that builder for 10 years and then went into my own business.”

When the Avetas went into business for themselves, their i rst company was called R.J. Aveta Inc. he company started out as a pool builder, but the Avetas soon found that they needed a ser-vice division as well to service the high-end pools they were building. They purchased a company called Creative Pools. Ron had joined an organization called he Master Pools Guild (as well as NESPA) and as he developed his master pools skills, he wanted it rel ected in the name of the company. h  ey changed Creative Pools to Creative Master Pools. “he Master Pools Guild is a brotherhood of people like me who have dedicated themselves to the betterment of the pool business,”

he said. “We want everyone in this business to be professional and we are always striving for a better product for the customer.” Creative Master Pools today em-ploys 30 people in the building and servicing of pools and spas. Creative only services pools it builds. h is busi-ness model apparently works well for the company because many of its cli-ents have been with it for 25 years.

PROJECT PARAMETERS:   his indoor pool required a high level of co-ordination between the home builder (who was also the homeowner), the ar-chitect and Creative Master Pools. Af-ter more than 100 hours of meetings on concept and design, it was decided that
a 16-ft  by 35-ft  pool would be construct-ed with a rock waterfall and slide as the
grand focal point that would it  into the pool building, which was designed
at 36 ft by 65 ft.
he ceiling height was set at 16 t  so that an adult would not hit his/her head standing near the top of the slide/waterfall. he pool would be 595 square ft , which would hold 21,200 gallons of water. It would be six-ft  deep at the deep end and 3’6” at the shallow end. he spa would be 7’ by 5’5” or approximately 40 square t . he homeowner did not want a spillway go-ing from the spa into the pool. Instead, water overl ows would be hidden in the
walls and l ow into the pool. his indoor pool is gunite, shot in-side of a framed pool room in the pool building. he waterfall and slide area are framed out with corrugated steel
and then, reinforced with rebar to sup-port this structure. Structural steel beams are installed below the support framing.

he pool and its mechanicals are ac-cessible from a room below pool level so that when repair and replacements need to be made in the future, none of the beautiful rock work or expensive detailing needs to be disturbed at pool level. Below the pool patio section,
HVAC and dehumidii cation  systems share space with the pool mechanical systems. he pool piping and HVAC venting were installed in coordinated phases for each to be optimized and
operate ei  ciently. All piping had to be strapped, bolted and supported prop-erly to minimize noise below the pool patio level. (h  is mechanical room is directly below the lounge seating area of the pool patio.)
he waterfall or and slide instal-lation required working in a very tight space with restricted headroom. he slide was designed in such a way as to give enough rise, length and turn to it
into the tight space. Waterfall boulders are set on each side of the slide, inside the coni nes of the block walls. Water-prooi  ng all water movement areas was necessary to avoid losing water. he indoor had to be set at an elevation that allowed access to the automatic cover
located in a vault under the waterfall. Custom stonework was designed to line the block walls before the waterfall boulders went in. Waterfall boulders were installed inside the stone walls.

Conduits for i ber optic lighting were installed in specii  c areas to optimize
the evening look of falling water. he customer did not want the au-tomatic cover accessible to the children in the family as they sat on the pool steps, so it was carefully concealed.
Hand-cut stone veneer was installed on stainless steel plates, which were installed vertically to hide the access into the automatic cover vault under-neath the waterfall. h  e stonework on the plates linked together to hide the joints. Further, an adjustable system
of stainless steel toggle i ttings  was designed to make these stone plates re-movable to access the automatic cover

behind for service. he interior walls of the pool building
are real stucco painted in a color remi-niscent of Tuscany. he finished water-fall surrounds the slide, seeming to fall out of old Italian walls and to be the focal point of this outstanding project. A jade colored pebble i nish plaster brings color to the pool water, since there is no sky to of er  rel  ection. Balance is achieved by using shapes, textures and colors that
complement each other, allowing the waterfall to draw the eye.

BUILDER COMMENTS:
“One of the challenges was installing the cover, which at the customer’s request was an auto cover that needed to be hidden in a box under the waterfall. Our solution was to install 24-inch long by 12-inch high stainless steel plates with real stone epoxied to them. he plates were designed to be removed so that the auto cover is serviceable. Even on close inspection, it is impossible to tell that there are joints because the stones overlap the plates. he slide, waterfalls and steps are cantilevered over this area.

“We had a little challenge on the
stone. We had numerous conversa-
tions with the homeowners on how
the stone would look. About i ve days
into the stone work, the homeowner
decided she did not like the stone. We
stopped work and did a couple more
mock ups. We had to rip out the stone
and re-do it. h  e homeowner loved the
new stone and, indeed, the whole proj-
ect. I work with great crat smen  and
all of our projects are quite emotional
to us, but we got over having to tear
it down and we built a great project.
h  e rock from the waterfall is Sussex
Moss. h  e stone around it is Rainbow
stone. It is practically a type of sand-
stone out of the Tennessee area. h e
homeowners wanted a Tuscany look to
the project and those stones matched
their conception of what would look
like Tuscany.
“h e way we designed and con-
structed the pool, you can walk around
the perimeter in the basement so that
all future repairs can be made from there. h  e pool is practically at ground
level. At  er the footings were poured,
a vault was built to hold the pool. It
is a vessel inside of a vessel. h  en, we
shot the gunite inside of that vessel on
top of the three-quarter inch stone to
bring the elevation up. Everything else
is built inside of that vessel.
“In the pool room, it is all real stuc-
co. It is all hand-applied stucco on all
of the walls. A rough coat was applied
to the walls and then we came in and
did our i  nished stone work. h en, af-
ter plastering and everything else was
done, they did the i   nal coloring on the
walls. To put in the initial base coat for
the stucco, there was a stage built over the pool so that the scaf olding could
be placed on it to reach the barrel ceil-
ing and other areas.
 “Besides being able to service the
pool from the room below it in the fu-
ture, if there ever is a catastrophic water
live break or pool failure, the room below
the pool can contain the water so that it
does not l  ood the house. h   e water is re-
leased into the town sewer system. h ere
are dam walls built in front of the win-
dows to make sure that the water would
never go outside of that room.
“h  e job took six months. Because
we work 12 months a year, we like to
schedule our indoor i  nishing work for
the cold months.”

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