Ted Martin, director
Adam Martin, construction manager
Compass Pools Vic
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Leveling the edge: The Martins, chose a similar scheme to Brown’s, but selected a stainless steel “capping” to fit with the contemporary dark-colored pool.
“When using long pieces, it’s a little bit easier to level instead of doing individual tiles, where you need to get each one level with the next one,” Adam Martin says. “Even from the planning stage of trying to figure out how we were actually going to do it, it just seemed to be an easier way to solve that leveling issue.”
They ordered the 5-inch-wide stainless steel capping from a local fabricator. The builder received four pre-welded corner pieces. On site, the crew could trim straight lengths to form the sides, then level them individually.
“We set the four corners in first so that they were all level,” Martin says. “Then we put the four straight sections between the corner pieces.”
The capping was held in place with stainless steel right-angle brackets, which were used to do the actual leveling. With the brackets at the right elevations, the capping would just sit on top.
“If it was off-level, at worst it could be removed from the brackets and re-leveled if there was any movement,” Martin says.
Crafting the gutter: The Martins used plumbing to serve as gutters on the two sides sporting a slot. For the slot-overflow gutters, they chose 300-millimeter (about 12-inch) storm-water pipe cut in half. They set it with brackets so it extended approximately 60 millimeters (about 2.3 inches) from the pool’s edge. “It’s not the prettiest way to do something, but it was under a deck so you didn’t see it,” Martin says. The pool itself was built on the ground as a free-standing unit using a specially manufactured shell. A wooden deck was built around the above-grade pool.
Preventing leaks: The Aussies used an aluminum roof flashing. “It’s a really thin piece of aluminum that you can mold and bend and flex quite easily by hand,” Adam Martin says. The flashing was used to bridge the coping and gutter.
“We attached it to the outer edge of the [fiberglass pool rim], and then the stainless steel capping went over the top of that,” Adam Martin says. “It made up the angle between the stainless steel capping and the gutter. So, as the water went over the edge of the stainless steel capping, it would slide down and hit that flashing, which then directed it into the gutter.”
They then ran a bead of silicon between the flashing and the gutter. “That way we joined the two together,” Martin says.
How three fiberglass experts met the challenge:
•Compass Pools Vic
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
•Bahamas Pool & Patio Ltd.
Nassau, New Providence, Bahamas
• On the Edge
Expert advice on creating the perimeter-overflow effect on concrete pools.