Material choices
We were unable to locate coping to match the existing polished French limestone decks, so I sourced a dense travertine which was tested for its resistance to acids and pool chemicals. The decks were later finished with the owner’s supplied French limestone tiles. The difference between the finished materials is indiscernible. While dry, the glass tile blend is quite hideous. But once wet, the material’s iridescence comes alive and the tiles shimmer like scales on a rainbow trout.
The brown granite was chosen because it contained speckles of the same color as the marble coping. I like to use polished granite on all of my flooded edges. Though set with the precision of water levels, any areas that are slightly high can be polished so they are exactly level. Glazed or glass tiles cannot easily be detailed in this fashion without showing signs of being “worked.”
One end of the gutter for the spa return to the pool is shown (note how the end of the gutter is finished where the bather can peer in. Beyond that, it’s waterproofed and finished with color-tinted thinset). Though is appears that the spa overflows into the vanishing edge basin, the water is actually captured and returned to the pool. If the spa were allowed to overflow into the basin in the normal filtration mode, the catch basin would quickly overflow and erode the hillside below. This is known among Genesis 3 as the “DiCaprio Effect” (the pool builder who built the actor’s vanishing edge pool made this neophyte mistake).