Portal: Pool

We see them in Hollywood movies, in luxury hotels and resorts, in state-of-the-art water parks, and now in residential backyards. Exotic, fantasy pools and spas harmo-nized within water gardens, waterfalls, and statues are now gaining in popularity. Whether it is for entertainment, exercise, the occasional dip, or simply pure family fun, pools and spas are definitely the way to go.
Unfortunately, these dream oasises are most often seen in hot weather climates for obvious reasons. But shotcrete has helped change this trend and has given northerners a chance to own and enjoy wonderful pools and spas.

In the late sixties when I started in the shotcrete industry, swim-ming pool construction was the main use for dry-mix shotcrete. Ah, yes, the good old œgunite days. Those were the days when safety was strictly a result of good luck. There were no complaints
if you got hurt”you just got over it.
The day would start at 5:30 a.m. in the yard. I drove the gunite rig, which was old, had no trailer brakes, no tail lights, and was held together with tie wire. Shooting the first pool usually would start around 7:00 a.m. The homeowner would always stay home and serve us coffee and donuts no later than 10:00 a.m. We would finish the first pool by 10:30 a.m. or so. After stopping to buy cold beer, our crew headed for our second pool of the day. Again, the homeowner would always stay home on gunite day, waiting for our arrival. Around noon, the home owner would ask if we would like something cool to drink and we would say beer would be fine, thank you. Believing they were being gracious hosts, homeowners served us beer on the job, which was the American way to work in the sixties. We would finish the second pool around 3:00 p.m.
Now it was time to head for the yard. That is when we started drinking beer on our own time. Back at the yard, we had a complete room devoted to beer drinking. A full supply of cold beer was always on hand. When it got dark we wanted a change of scenery and would head to a bar to let off a little steam. And so it was in the œgunite industry in the sixties when I entered this industry.
Then came along the words œworkers™ compensation. It changed the way we œworked. Some of the changes seemed so silly and childish.

In 1956, the National Swimming Pool Institute (NSPI) was established by members of the pool industry to provide a forum for discussion among industry professionals to elevate the standards of the swimming pool industry, to promote swimming and swimming pools, to educate the public about swimming pools, and to achieve uniformity in the regulations applied to swimming pools. NSPI was incorporated in Illinois as a non-profit corpor-ation and was recognized as such with a 501c6 designation by the IRS, which designated the organization as a trade association. In 1980, after the International Spa and Tub Association became a part of the National Swimming Pool Institute, the name was changed to the National Spa & Pool Institute.

Construction workmanship contributes signiïcantly to the quality of any concrete project, but it plays a particularly important role in shotcrete projects. Preconstruction testing of cores taken from sample panels can help flag some potential material problems, but the shotcrete crew™s technique determines the quality of the project. Fortunately, methods have been developed to examine, sample, test, and evaluate the quality of in-place shotcrete, as well as to determine the causes of distress or deterioration. This article recounts investigations into several shotcrete pool projects that exhibited various problems and explains the findings and their significance in each case.

The objective of this paper is to discuss some as-pects of shotcrete pool construction, using Chapter 7, œPool Structure, of the NSPI Builders Manual as a guide. The author came into contact with this manual after being asked, on behalf of ASA™s Edu-cation Committee, to prepare a shotcrete pool class session for the NSPI annual meeting on November 28, 2001, in Phoenix, Arizona. This paper is also to be discussed at that conference.

Seeing is believing. It’s also a good way to teach. That’s the idea behind a series of scheduled demonstrations slated for the 2001 International Pool & Spa Expo, which will be held in Phoenix, November 27-30. More than just a passive exhibition, this area will offer hands-on instruction covering a variety of pool and spa building and service topics ” from putting tiles on a wall to troubleshooting problems.
This year, the demonstration area will feature shotcrete techniques and training. Hands-on instruction, led by experts in the field, will help shotcreters hone their skills and become better at what they do. Shooting concrete isn™t as straightforward as it seems ” in fact, it™s a craft. The training demonstration will cover the different types of shotcreting, as well as various types of equipment and ways of using it. But, most importantly, a field test will allow participants to take a turn at shooting shotcrete themselves.

Some of the world’s dreamiest pools are formed from very concrete ideas.
According to the National Spa & Pool Institute (NSPI), an international trade association of more than 5,200 manufacturers, distributors, retailers, service companies, and builders in the pool/spa and hot tub industry, some 7.5 million people in the continental U.S. currently own pools.