November 2002

hen sizing troughs for his vanishing-edge catch basins, David Schneider, president of Natures Creations in Santa Fe, N.M., likes to contain the following:

• Rainwater: Water shortages are a way of life in Santa Fe, so Schneider designs basins and tanks to contain a year’s worth of rainwater. “If I get that water, I want to keep it,” he says. “I don’t want it overflowing and running out.”

To do this, he performs the same equation for flooding the pool, but rather than performing it for the fraction of an inch that he wants to flood the pool, he does it for the average yearly rainfall.

The water stays in the pool to keep it running, so the homeowners don’t have to use as much water to top it off. This consciousness goes over well with his local building department.

• Attached spa: Schneider sizes the tank or basin to accommodate spa water so customers can empty the spa if necessary without losing all the water. This way, the water can cycle through the whole system if it gets cloudy.

“We actually size the surge tank to handle a complete dump and then we pull the water out of the pool and let the pool system filter out or dilute the cloudy water of the spa,” Schneider says.
To do this, perform a basin volume calculation: length x width x depth.

• Upper waterfeature: If the aquascape includes a waterfeature that falls into the main pool, the catch basin will need to handle the water dropping from the waterfeature when it’s turned off. At the very least, it will have to contain the amount needed to lift water over the edge.

If the waterfeature completely empties when shut down, the catch basin also will have to accommodate the volume of the waterfeature pool.