Clean, crisp and great with kids

Designed by Cascade Swimming Pools

Owner's brief – unhand the avacados

The brief for this award winning pool by Cascade Pools was pretty open, with the only firm stipulation being don't touch the prized backyard avacado tree that was potentially in the way of construction progress.

In response, Cascade designed a rectangular pool that worked perfectly in proportion with the backyard area available.

One tricky aspect was the sandy nature of the ground, which meant checking and rechecking as work progressed to ensure true and perfect proportions.

The size of things

The generous family pool is 9m long by 4m wide and slopes from a child-friendly 1.3m at one end to a jump-friendly 2m at the other end. 

The size of the pool also leaves plenty of room for generous paving right around the pool and a degree of breathing space from the outdoor living spaces.

Strong and good looking

The in-ground concrete pool has an Abgal interior membrane. 

Myles Ogden, partner at Cascade Pools, says the company has been building liner pools for 50 years and using Abgal liners for 22 years – the latest version features in this pool.

"You can literally drive a car onto this membrane and then lift it up with a crane," he says. "And we know this works because we've done it ourselves to demonstrate the membrane's strength."

The owners had 16 colour versions of the membrane to choose from and went with Reef Pebble.

Stepping in and sitting pretty

Entry into the pool is by side steps facing the house that extend out from the principal pool rectangle facing the house. 

In addition the entry steps are designed in a wide format to double as casual in-pool seating – providing for that ideal relaxing mode, being half in and half out of the water.

Safety first and last

A near invisible glass balustrade keeps young children safely away from the water unless a watching parent says different. 

However, this regulation safety feature isn't the pool's only safety element.

A child-friendly, one metre deep, under the water surface safety toe ledge runs all the way around the pool so that a child can always swim to the side, stand on the toe ledge, and hold on to the pool edge for a quick, safe purchase.

Cascade Swimming Pools add this built-in safety feature to all Cascade Pool projects – these are usually 5 to 10cm wide.

Filtering to the max

The pool uses a crushed glass filled filter as opposed to a sand filter and works with an Ozone system which employs activated oxygen sanitisation. 

"Reports indicate that this system kills over 98% of pool germs and bacteria where other chlorine-based systems only knock out about 65% of unwanted bacteria," says Myles Ogden.

A silver splash

This pool has attracted a Silver award for Pools $61-120,000 from the New Zealand Swimming Pool Industry Association.

Designed by: Cascade Swimming Pools

Story by: Trendsideas