BUILD · POOLS & SPAS
Pools & Spas.
A pool at Alterra is designed to the house and the land first — the shape, the edge, and the material selection emerge from what the site already is, not from a pool-industry catalog.
We design before we dig.
The pool shape is a landscape-architecture decision, resolved before excavation begins. We draw the pool against the house elevation, against the existing tree canopy, against the garden structure that already reads on the site. The rectangle that works for a Highland Park estate with a formal allée is not the rectangle that works for a Preston Hollow contemporary with a native-grass meadow beyond it. Edge treatment — perimeter overflow, cantilevered coping, scupper integration — is decided in drawings, not negotiated at the dig. Coping material is specified on the same sheet as the terrace material, because they read together and must be chosen together. The pool is a moment in the landscape, not a separate project dropped into an excavated hole in the lawn.
Pool excavation coordinates with hardscape rough-grade rather than preceding it independently. Plumbing rough-in aligns with the planting bed layout so the mainline does not bisect a root zone that mattered on the Site & Story walk. Decking goes on after the coping line is established, not before. Landscape planting follows decking and coping, so the palette reads against finished stone rather than construction mud. The pool contractor, hardscape crew, planting installer, and lighting subcontractor each work from the same sheet set, with the Principal on site at every phase transition. Review the Process for how the six phases carry this forward.
MATERIALS
Plaster, PebbleTec, natural-stone coping.
Plaster is the baseline interior finish — white plaster for the lightest water tone, grey-tinted plaster for a darker reflection register. PebbleTec and the aggregate-finish family add texture and color depth: a pebble finish reads more naturalistic, and its longer service life is a register decision rather than an upcharge. Aggregate-blend finishes sit between, offering tonal control without the full texture of pebble. We specify the finish on the pool drawing and the finish color sample is approved against a physical chip, never against a screen render. Brand-specific partnerships [OPERATOR: partner brand names pending permission per D-5] stay as typographic references rather than logo placements.
Coping is where the pool reads against the terrace, and the material choice carries across both. Lueders limestone at sawn or full-brushed finish is our default; the warm grey-cream tone reads well against DFW soil color and weathers to a soft patina rather than yellowing. Pennsylvania bluestone takes over where the architecture pulls cooler — modernist residences, contemporary glass-and-steel massing — and the thermal-finished cut runs flush with the terrace line. Travertine only where the microclimate and the architectural register both justify the choice; it is not our default because of both freeze-thaw concerns post-Uri and its tendency to hold algae at the wet edge. Coping overhang is drawn at built-line dimension, typically 1 to 1.5 inches, set in drawings before any stone is specified.
Pool decking reads as a continuation of the wider hardscape, not a separate zone. Where the primary terrace is Lueders limestone, the pool deck is Lueders; where it is bluestone, the deck is bluestone. We do not use thermoplastic decking; the UV performance on exposed DFW surfaces is poor, the expansion behavior is wrong, and the resin tones read discordant against natural stone. High-end architectural concrete is a secondary option where the register calls for a monolithic surface, set with integrated color and saw-cut expansion joints drawn at the same rhythm as the stone field. Transition to adjacent hardscape is drawn, not negotiated — the line where the pool deck ends and the wider terrace or path begins is resolved in plan view before construction starts.
RESILIENCE · POOLS AND SPAS AFTER URI
What we changed after February 2021.
The pre-Uri default in DFW was foam wrap to industry-default thickness — typically half-inch — with no attention to orientation or run length. That default failed across the metro in February 2021. Our current spec requires one-inch closed-cell foam minimum on above-slab runs, two-inch on any run facing a northeast exposure or carrying across an unheated attic, and heated-trace cabling wrapped into the spec for pump-loop returns that cannot be buried below the frost line. Above-slab runs on exposed masonry receive a UV-rated outer sheath so the insulation does not degrade at three seasons and re-fail at five.
Autofill fittings — the class of fixtures that keep pool water level on drawdown — failed widely in Uri through thermal shock and expansion mismatch. Plastic-body autofills with inadequate freeze-break tolerance split at the housing. Our current spec requires a brass-body autofill with a drain port and a documented freeze-break rating [OPERATOR: partner product specification pending permission per D-5]. Pool light niches and skimmer bodies face similar stress; we now specify commercial-grade components on residential installs, because Uri-scale events do not respect the residential-vs-commercial distinction.
At handoff, the homeowner receives a photo-indexed winterization packet: every valve location, every drain point, every shutoff on the pool equipment pad, and the order of operations for a forecast freeze event. We walk the protocol in person during the first-freeze-window visit in November or December of the build year. The protocol is a printed document, not a verbal instruction — it lives with the project record in the homeowner's hands and in our archive. In the event of a forecast multi-day sub-freezing event, we are on call for the pools we have built; the phone call is the answer when the protocol flags a question.
We site the equipment pad on a sheltered south or southwest exposure wherever the site plan allows, with a minimum clearance from uninsulated masonry runs to prevent cold radiation into the pump loop. Northeast exposures are avoided for heat-exchangers; where siting constraints force a northeast placement, we specify an insulated enclosure with trace heating and document it accordingly. The minimum clearance between pump housing and any potentially freeze-load structure is drawn on the equipment layout, not left to the installer to interpret. Full resilience treatment lives at the Resilience section.
We specify the pool as if the next Uri-scale event will arrive next February. That framing is not pessimism; it is the cost of designing for a place that has now produced two such events in the lifetime of a single mortgage.
INTEGRATION
Pools rarely sit alone.
A pool project rarely enters the site alone. It arrives with a new hardscape terrace, new screen planting, new scale trees to establish the edge, a revised lighting plan, and in many cases a new outdoor-living structure — pergola, kitchen, fireplace. Where the design calls for water beyond the pool itself, water features carry into the same build. We sequence all of it — pool, hardscape, planting, lighting, water — on a single build calendar, with the phases held by the same Principal so that the pool contractor is not handing off to a hardscape crew who is not handing off to a planting installer across separate invoices and separate job trailers. The result is a property that reads as one composition rather than a pool dropped into a separately built yard.
SELECTED POOL & SPA WORK
[OPERATOR: featured pool and spa projects will appear here once project records are updated with relevant typology tags.]