Living Landscapes: Water Features You Can Add to Your Pool
Perhaps you already have a pool, or you are considering one. Certainly, swimming pools are gems in and of themselves. But when you upgrade your pool by adding a water feature, you turn an otherwise static pool environment into a living landscape.
Indeed, moving water is delightful to listen to — one of Mother Nature’s most enjoyable songs. Its splashes and laps can come out in force to be stimulating, they can gently flow to encourage serenity and relaxation, they can splash and spray to delight and refresh, and they can drop over us like a shower and thrill and invigorate.
Whatever choice of water feature you make, it will add beauty, make your pool area more of a prized retreat, and add that splash of drama.
What Types of Water Features Go With a Pool?
One option when building or remodeling your pool is a “scupper” waterfall — a simple or ornate opening through which water flows out from pool walls into the pool. Scuppers bring in movement and soothing sounds and require little or no maintenance. They can be narrow water flows or broadened into a sheer descent waterfall (sheet falling) design.
Unlike scuppers, “spillway” water features do not come out from pool walls, but flow into your pool from a second structure. Often that structure is a custom spa, which is usually built at the same time as the pool. But the good news is, it doesn’t have to be.
There’s also “gushers and jets,” as well as what many feel are the most prized of all — “stream-fed waterfalls.” Here’s some examples of living landscapes we installed:
When we remodeled this previously vinyl-lined pool into a larger Gunite (cement) pool, we included three sheer descent waterfalls. Many feel sheer descents are like moving pieces of art — elegant and captivating.
This custom spa was built as the same time as the pool and with the careful placement of rocks underneath creates a double waterfall as it flows into the pool.
Not all spillways need to be installed when building your pool. This was a remodel we did for clients who had a pool. The spa is a portable hot tub we set in a cultured stone surround. A sheer descent spillway comes out from it; above a fire bowl drops water into the hot tub.
Here we added both sprays and waterfalls. Swimmers love the refreshing splashes from the sprays which add a delightful sense of fun as well as beauty.
There’s nothing quite like swimming under and beside falling water.
Here, the source of one waterfall — the spa — gets its own waterfall from a stream set into the landscape.