on Gibbons has been building beach- entry pools for about 20 years.
“We did the beach entries before anybody even knew what they were,” says the president of Pools by Ron Gibbons in Islip Terrace, N.Y. “We were winging it.”
A lot has changed since then. Beach entries are more popular than ever, and thanks to pioneers such as Gibbons, builders no longer have to wing it when they add this design feature to their pools.
But builders still must be careful to address these four challenges of beach entry design:
• Be sure there’s enough space for the beach entry
• Build an entry that looks beautiful now and into the
feature
• Design the entry to keep it clean
• Keep the users’ safety in mind
Regardless of whether you’re just starting out or looking for a little refresher, the following expert tips will help you handle each area of beach entry design with ease.
SAVING SPACE
1. Try a space-saving placement
Who says a beach entry has to head straight into the pool? If you follow the National Spa & Pool Institute’s recommended slope of 1 foot drop for every 7 feet of run, you’ll need a 21-foot-long beach just to reach 3 feet of depth. The gentler rates of 10-to-1-foot or 12-to-1-foot, require a 30- to 36-foot entry. That’s a lot of dead space, especially when the entry is the same width as the pool. Using a steeper slope isn’t an option. It could be uncomfortable and even dangerous for users.
But the beach entry doesn’t have to be the same width as the pool. Instead, you can wrap the entry into the pool. “If you creatively design them, there are ways around it,” says Ray Alderete, owner of Alderete Pools in San Clemente, Calif. “Sometimes you don’t have the length between the house and the pool, but you can wrap it at an angle and come parallel with the pool. There’s your beach walking in and you circle out.”
The beach can also go along the short side of the pool, says Robert Horne, vice president of marketing and design at Aquatic Pools Inc. in Rio Rancho, N.M.
2. Try a different beach: The modified sun shelf
For safety reasons, you can’t use more drastic rise-to-run ratios on beach entries. But you can shorten the beach by sloping it only until it reaches, say, 12 to 24 inches. Then, rather than continue the slope, you can step it down into the pool. “That way, the [owners] have the look of the beach entry without it taking up as much of the pool,” says Joe Pizzifred, president of Paul Bogner Pools in Riverside, Calif.
Be sure to clearly mark the steps, as you would with any set. Pizzifred doesn’t like to use a tile line at this point because it breaks up the continuity. “Normally, we use some type of tile spotter or something like that that will make the steps show up,” he says. “We want just a little mild contrast down where the edge is. We’ll use maybe four or five 3-by-3-inch tiles [with] a subtle shaded color difference, but just enough where they can see it. It indicates the edge of it without creating that definite line, and it just is more subtle-looking.”
If the beach steps down shallow enough, builders can even create a modified sun shelf, says Al Rizzo, president of Rizzo Pools in Newington, Conn.
BEAUTY AND DURABILITY
3. Stabilize the area with gravel or a footing
Shallow areas such as beach entries present unique structural challenges. If poured directly onto the ground, the beach would sit on top soil. This is soil likely loosened by grading, root penetrations, rainfall and wet/dry cycles. “These soils aren’t usually properly compacted like the soil 4 feet down,” says civil engineer Ron Lacher, president of Pool Engineering in Anaheim, Calif. “So it’s very dangerous to put anything on the surface. For one thing, it is subject to more expansion and contraction.”
Any time you build the same on different soil types, you’re asking for trouble, Lacher says. This could result in the hinge effect. That’s what happens when a pool cracks because one side of the pool settles at a different rate than the rest.
In colder states, there’s another with top soil: It sits right in the frost line, adds Neil O. Anderson, a geotechnical and civil engineer and president of Neil O. Anderson & Associates Inc. in Lodi, Calif.
So it’s best to avoid pouring the beach directly onto that top soil. Dig until you reach safe territory.
In ideal soil, that generally means digging out the top 18 inches of soil, says Anderson. Builders should then fill the space in with concrete. In cold-weather states or expansive-soil areas, he recommends digging down below the frost line, anywhere from 12 to 30 inches. A self-draining material such as gravel or sand that moves water away from the shell should then be used as fill. In addition, Rizzo says some beach-entry pools in cold-weather areas require a frost wall, similar to a perimeter footing, to protect them.
Areas such as Texas that suffer from expansive soils are even more complicated. In these areas, builders must determine where the active zone is and dig below it. Anderson then recommends footings or piers if you have to go more than a couple of feet to get below the active zone. If you have a planter near the beach, he suggests a perimeter cut-off footing to stop water migrating from the planter to the shell.
Of course, builders in these areas should not wing it. Consult with an engineer to find out how to best stabilize the pool.
4. Move the bond beam down for a clear slope
The clean, gentle glide of a beach entry doesn’t happen without careful design. The deck and beach must meet seamlessly. To accomplish this, the bond beam must be lower than the waterline so the water can meet the deck. If you don’t make the bond beam low enough, you could end up with an unattractive bump where the deck and bond beam meet.
“If we want the water to come right over on top of the bond beam, we actually trench that area out and step the bond beam down,” says Rick Timmons, president of Custom Pools & Masonry in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
To do this, steel tiers curve the rebar down 6 inches. They then level the beach entry beam. From there, it goes back up to the normal bond beam elevation.
Horne’s crews take a different tack. They turn the bond beam on its side rather than building it straight up and down. This way, it’s wider than it is tall. The beach-entry material can meet up directly with the deck and seamlessly glide into the pool.
Both builders also use a structural engineer’s detail plan.
5. Stay a while during key phases
A smooth transition also relies on impeccable craftsmanship at the excavation and gunite phases. So these builders supervise closely at these phases.
Timmons stays on site throughout the gunite phase. He does this on all his projects. But he particularly recommends it for beach-entry pools because they depend so heavily on proper elevations. Like Pizzifred, Timmons even takes the time to show the right elevations and angle. “It is critical where the depth is on that beach entry, and the angle it comes out on,” he says. “So we’ll set some rebar and pull wires to show how we want that beach entry to finish at the exact angle. We don’t leave it up to chance.”
During the gunite phase, Alderete will stop his crews and actually walk on the beach to make sure it isn’t too steep. “There’s nothing better than walking it,” he says. “Until you walk in and down into the bottom of the shallow end, you really don’t know if it’s the right slope. You’ll feel when it’s too steep — you’ll lean backwards.
“So the guy’s there shooting, and I’m walking in and out, saying ‘No, bring it up more. No, bring it up less,’ ” he says. “I keep working it until I get it exactly the way I want it. I have the material and the machine right there, so if we need to bring it higher, we shoot it more while I’m there.”
6. Use a stone swath where the water fluctuates
Many builders gravitate to pebble surfaces for coating a beach entry. This surface can go from wet to dry with no problem. At the same time, it’s still affordable enough to coat the whole pool.
However, some clients find the surface too rough to sit on. Others find it more difficult to scrub if that nagging calcium line eventually builds up. “A lot of times that surface isn’t conducive to sitting on with an expensive bathing suit,” Horne says.
So Timmons uses quartzite or another natural stone whenever he can. But he only uses it along the beach area. It would cost too much otherwise. The stone can completely blanket smaller entries. It can also just provide a swath of stone at the waterline area on larger areas. Either way, he says, “It looks beautiful because the sun dances off the surface and it sparkles.”
But when figuring out how much stone to use, remember that the waterline fluctuates more at the beach entry than it does in the rest of the pool. “It could be four times more. That 3-inch fluctuation on a vertical wall could be a foot on the beach entry,” Timmons says.
That’s why he installs at least a 2-foot-wide band of stone: 1 foot on the ideal waterline’s dry side and 1 foot on the wet side.
7. Include an overflow line and auto fill
Timmons sets all his pools up to automatically maintain the right water-level range. These systems take on even more significance in beach entries for two reasons: (1) The shallow areas evaporate more quickly than the rest of the pool. (2) Water can escape out of a beach entry more easily.
CLEANLINESS
8. Keep it clean with return inlets and in-floor cleaner heads
Too many beach entries go without any provisions to keep them clean. “I know of some beach entries where the only [water] movement they depend on is people going in and out,” says Rizzo.
But to really do the job, builders should use inlets or in-floor-cleaner heads to clean the surface.
Rizzo suggests using side-wall directional flows once the walls are 3 or 4 feet deep. Aim the flows across the floor or toward the waterline.
Another option is in-floor cleaning heads. The placement of these depends in part on how far they can sweep. Because he generally keeps his beaches 8 to 10 feet wide, Alderete will place one head in the middle. The brand he uses will shoot a 10-foot diameter, amply covering that area.
You also need enough depth with in-floor cleaners so the water doesn’t shoot into the air. Gibbons is able to put the heads in water as shallow as 1 inch. He puts in a row of heads of the beach entry set approximately 3 feet apart. He then fixes them so they don’t rotate. This way, the in-floor cleaners shoot the dirt straight down into the pool, where the cleaning system picks it up.
“When they all come on, it causes a venturi and actually sucks the dirt out of the middle, where the two jets are shooting [toward each other],” Gibbons says. “So it works pretty well.”
To get the most out of the cleaner heads, Horne puts them closer than normal. “In a normal pool, let’s say we were placing the heads 10 feet apart,” he says. “On a ramp like this, I may make my cleaning radius 5 feet because it’s a more abrasive surface [if using pebble]. So it takes more velocity and flow to clean that.”
9. Place a waterfeature nearby
Inlets and in-floor cleaners still might not be able to reach the shallowest of the water. But a well-placed waterfeature can. In natural pools, try a rock waterfall to gently agitate the water and sweep dirt back to the body of the pool.
10. Use a slot overflow or grate
Allowing the water to pour over a grate or narrow slot helps keep water moving in the beach area. “All the debris can run right over the edge and go down into a collecting tank,” Gibbons says.
Not only that, but this system makes surfacing much more cut-and-dried. “We marble dust right up to where we have the channel and it stays fine because it’s all underwater,” Gibbons says. Then the decking can begin right on the other side of the grate or slot.
11. Beef up the circulation equipment
When water is only inches deep, chlorine burns out of it much more quickly. While it isn’t always necessary, Rizzo likes to use an oversized filter and pump on beach-entry pools to boost circulation and filtration. “If we’re doing a 16-by-30-foot pool, we’ll use a system that could handle a 20-by-40,” he says.
SAFETY
12. Direct traffic with stones or planters
Nice as they are, beach entries can be awkward or even unsafe. If you run the beach along the side of the pool, for instance, you might end up with spots where the beach is right next to areas that are several feet deep. “If people don’t go right down that beach entry, if they go off at an angle, they will fall off,” Pizzifred says. “Even with the spotter [tiles], it can happen fairly easily.”
Builders also have to watch that area where the wall just begins off the beach entry. From the moment the wall starts until it reaches about 5 inches tall, it presents a toe-stubbingly awkward step-down. Because people expect a 6-inch step, anything less could throw users off-kilter.
Thoughtfully placed rocks, planters or statuary will mitigate this problem. Timmons puts a boulder on either side of the beach entry. That way, he only has tile up to the point of the boulder. This also saves installers the chore of having to cut tiles progressively smaller as the wall shortens.
Stones or planters also can separate the shallow beach from deeper areas. You don’t need rocks or planters large enough to block people — just large enough to direct them. “Once they’ve started down the ramp, they realize where they need to go,” Horne says.
13. Cover the floor with safety-grip material
The shallowness of a beach entry can present a safety challenge: Water that is only inches deep won’t cushion falls. Pebble and rock surfaces help minimize that possibility by providing a slip-resistant surface. When the beach entry meets a plaster pool bottom, Horne also applies a skid-resistant coating where the smoother plaster surface starts.
“There’s a special material in the pool industry that we call shark’s tooth,” Horne says. “It’s like a safety hold, a grip. We apply it to [the beach entry] the same way you could apply it to a sidewalk.”
14. Use color differentials for safety
Builders avoid using tile lines to distinguish the shallow beach from deeper areas in the pool because it breaks the flow.
Still, safety is a serious concern for Timmons, who worries that people might try to dive in shallow water. “Especially at night, people go out and think they can dive or jump into the pool anywhere,” he says.
So he occasionally uses color differentials to show depth differentials. A stone swath will help do this. But he might also use lighter-shaded pebble finishes in the beach and move to darker colors in the main body.
“It looks authentic, like the beaches down in Florida where it looks greenish where it’s shallow, and gets bluer and bluer as it gets deeper,” he says.
You can try this whether you use pebble or plaster, says Horne, who also uses this technique on plastered ramps.
15. Use lighting to create depth awareness
Swimmers also need adequate lighting to help them see depth progression. But code says traditional pool lights need at least 18 inches of water. So Timmons breaks out the fiberoptics to create a starry look at the bottom of the beach. He also might place spotlights in the shallower areas. Using more traditional pool or landscape lighting on nearby spas or other features further helps illuminate the beach.
