Concrete Pool Comes Alive After Dark

Residential swimming pools are often designed with fun-in-the-sun in mind, with little attention given to enhancing the experience of swimming after dark. Because many homeowners today have demanding careers and are rarely home during the day, Chris Neal of Elite Crete Design has taken the opposite approach. He optimizes his company’s concrete pools and pool decks for nocturnal enjoyment, incorporating multicolored LED lighting and sheer-descent waterfalls that put on a show after the sun goes down.

“Lighting and water cascades are something that we offer to our clients on every pool project we build. Offering these features adds a customized look to the job that a simple pool alone can't achieve,” says Neal, whose company specializes in custom swimming pools as well as stamped and architectural concrete.

For this project, located in Brooklin, Ontario, the homeowners are young professionals who commute to and from Toronto each day and have very busy schedules. “They were interested in something that involves very little maintenance, but that would also produce a very high-end, finished look,” says Neal.

The project included the installation of around 2,000 square feet of colored and stamped concrete, concrete masonry walls faced with natural stone, a hot tub, nine sheer-descent waterfalls and, of course, the custom LED lighting. “The main swimming pool has three multicolor LED lights, and the hot tub has one. The staircase going from the pool deck to the hot tub sitting area, as well as the upper stair at the house, have an additional 20 low-voltage LEDs,” says Neal.

The color scheme for the stamped concrete pool deck is a combination of light and dark gray, achieved using dry-shake color hardeners. The pattern is a seamless, continuous-texture Roman slate. “Many of our clients favor this look since it is clean and natural in appearance. Since there are no defined lines like with other patterns, we incorporate our sawcuts (or relief cuts) into a designed pattern to make them aesthetically pleasing,” says Neal.

While stamped and colored concrete is at the forefront of what Elite-Crete does, they now incorporate precision-cut natural stone coping and wall veneer in nearly every job they do. “This allows for not only variation from standard concrete colors, but it also softens the overall feel of the project, making it more natural. We pride ourselves on making each project as unique as we possibly can,” says Neal.

The mix of stamped concrete and natural stone has become very popular with Elite Crete’s clients, Neal adds. “With the freeze-thaw climate we experience in this region of Canada, cast-in-place stamped concrete and mortared stone is a combination that can withstand our extreme temperatures.”

Materials usedDry-shake color hardeners and concrete sealer: Concreation Canada

Concrete ContractorChris Neal
Elite Crete Design Inc., Oshawa, Ontario
www.elitecretedesign.com

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