Renewable energy has long been known to be a more efficient way of generating electricity than traditional methods such as fossil fuels. With the advancement of technology, more efficient and practical means have been discovered to store energy for later use. Solar energy, derived from the Earth’s own sun, has many advantages over traditional fuels and the power to change our lives. The main benefit of solar energy is that it provides a large amount of energy at no cost if properly utilized by modern technology.

Solar energy is a wonderful gift of nature and has the potential to be the sole energy source for the entire world if proper investment is given to its research and development. This concept of solar energy has also been applied to swimming pools in order to heat or cool the water inside swimming pools. Many New Jersey pool builders offer to provide the solar heating facility for your pools. Swimming pool builders can offer solar heating for pools provided that there is reasonable access to your roof area. Pool builders suggest that the absorber area should be around 75%-100% of the pool surface area.

How Does Solar Heating Work For Pools?

Solar heating works through the use of solar collectors that are installed onto the roof of your house. These collectors connect through pipes to your pool’s pump system. This pump drives water from the pool, using a filter to eliminate debris, and then up using solar collectors. These collectors are the core of the system as they are responsible for heating the water. Pool builders place the collectors at those locations which can receive maximum sunlight.

When there is no sun or when the water present in the solar collectors is cooler or has almost the same temperature as the pool water, a control valve sends the water back into the pool instead of driving it up through the collector. It is not just in winter or during the cold months that this technology can be used. During the hottest months, the solar heater can be used to cool water in swimming pools. Cooling is done by running the water through the collector, at night, and then transferring the cooled water to the pool.

Many people ask our trained professionals to get the solar heating system for their pools so that they can extend their swimming season by weeks or even months. The solar heating system is preferred over regular pool heaters as the other sources of heating may use tons of energy, and you may end up struggling to pay your utility bills just to heat or cool your pool.

Many swimming pools use a solar heater in combination with a conventional pool heater. However, the occurrence of many cool and rainy days may not allow the water in your pools to heat up. In this situation, our certified trained professionals suggest that there should always be a standby energy source such as a natural-gas system that can serve the purpose in conditions when solar heating may not be ideal.

Solar heating may not be suitable to everyone. One must always weigh the benefits against the cost of installing a system and also evaluate the costs of other heating and cooling options. Hiring a trusted contractor who has years of experience in building custom swimming pools can aid you in finding out the system that will work best for your home or property.

Photos in all the magazines and newspapers at the time showed the most popular and famous people in Hollywood at the time, stars like; Jack Benny, Bing Crosby, Red Skelton and more lounging, swimming and socializing at their pools and like all good promotion, when the rich and famous are doing it, everyone wants to do it!

Paddock touted the swimming pools positive marketing points such as; health and recreation benefits, a great new “hobby” as his marketing read, fun for the whole family, enhance the beauty and value of your grounds and gardens and a great way to live the “California life.”

That life style hit the United States by storm and from Hollywood, California all the way to Bergen County, New Jersey, and in the next short 10 years pool building jumped from around 2000 pools in the entire United States to almost 60,000 by the mid to late 1950’s! And it never stopped, with estimates now of almost 1.5 million swimming pools in the USA today. Ilsley was the Henry Ford of swimming pools and that is no exaggeration!

Although the oval pool at the Cahuenga Vista Inn is believed to be have been built in 1916 and the first rounded pool in modern times, Philip Ilsley introduced the entire USA to the rounded pool in mass and mastered it’s building techniques and design for the time. The common limited design of the rectangle pool so prevalent up to this time had its reign come to an end.

Thanks to Philip Ilsley there was a revolution in custom swimming pool shapes from fully round pools, to oval, kidney, clover and eventually every shape evolved from these early changes in swimming pool shape and design. But how did Ilsley come up with rounding the corners on pools?

Ironically, it was Richard Neutra’s use of gunite (see earlier in this article) to build the famous Lovell Heath House and ingenuous balcony pool that influenced Ilsley. Ilsley realized that he could create a wire frame and shoot the concrete in (gunite) and thus the design limits and boundaries of swimming pool design and shape were changed forever!

Not only did this modernize the designs of the new pools being built from here on out but it also allowed a pool to be built in only 6 days, considered a miracle in pool construction at the time. Although Ilsely’s pool building techniques have been improved upon, these pool building methods are still in use today!

During the 1930’s and 40’s Ilsley continued to build pools and had the largest professional pool building business in the entire world. He became “the man” to go to for a custom pool in the day and built all the movie stars pools for the time.

He made a fortune buying up huge plots of land in Southern California and building custom homes with pools on every one of them, thus increasing the values of the homes and properties and making his brand new homes some of the most desirable built at the time.

We here at Custom Pool Pros enjoy not only building and designing custom swimming pools in New Jersey but we truly enjoy the history of our craft. We hope you enjoy reading our post.

From using steel in the construction and gunite (sprayed concrete as an answer to get concrete up on the steep hill) to the first custom swimming pool set on a terrace (an answer to having a pool on a hill side, something not before seen in history). Neutra set a new bar in architecture and has become a “must study” for modern architects and homebuilders. The Lovell Heath House is considered an architectural and artistic masterpiece and is visited and studied even today.

Every swimming pool built on the side of a mountain or hill now, can trace it’s roots back to Lovell Heath House and Neutra, he figured out that you could set up a terrace with a hollow floor and set the pool right inside with concrete and no need for land! Truly amazing. Unbeknownst to Nuetra at the time, he would go on to influence pool construction for the next 80+ years!

Around this same time, the “Ennis House,” also in Los Angeles, was built by master architect and legendary writer Frank Lloyd Wright. Mr. Wright was known for his use of interlocking bricks in his architecture (much like what is used by pavers today) and organic style, not only building incredible custom homes but beautiful pools, organic stone waterfalls and other artistic designs so far ahead of their time, they are still considered current and modern.

It is no doubt that the 20’s were revolutionary for swimming pool design. But as with all new innovation comes advances based on those earlier advancements, so comes the 1930’s and evolution of pool building would be just as extraordinary as the previous decade!

We hope you enjoy reading our post. Feel free to comment on this post. And remember that when the time comes to build your own outdoor paradise look no further than the most professional experienced pool builders in New Jersey, Custom Pool Pros. Family owned and operated, we take pride in our hands-on approach to pool installation and construction.

Pools were also used to socialize around, regular parties and events were thrown around them and more and more pools were designed and built as photos surfaced in the newspapers and magazines. It was now clear that if you wanted to be a “somebody” you had to have a pool (or 2!).

Some of the most notable custom pools built during these times were done by such men as the oil baron Edward L. Doheny who not only bought his mansion in Beverley Hills, but ended up buying every home on the entire street. Around 1927 Doheny built massive custom pools with an enormous cascading waterfall coming down the hills and into the pools at the back of his enormous mansion.

Doheny was a dynamic individual that ended up donating huge chunks of land and money for schools like USC, Mount St. Mary’s College and Loyola Marymount University, but his flare for the extravagant sparked a birth of creative designing and customizing swimming pools and once again upped the game.

With the use of waterfalls to enhance architectural pool design, custom pools would never look the same. At Custom Pool Pros in New Jersey, we can create an oasis right in your back yard. Let us show you how we can build a custom pool, waterfall, and hardscape your backyard into a paradise fit for an oil baron!

The outside pool Hearst called “The Neptune Pool” and had an actual ancient Roman Temple shipped from Italy to add as an ornament along with Greek and Roman statues of gods, goddesses and griffins! The outdoor custom pool was shaped in the form of a “T” it was over 100 feet long and 95 feet wide at the top of the T. The incredible indoor pool was designed in an almost over the top Roman-Greco design, with marble columns and ornate blue tiles, real gold trim and again, Greek and Roman statues. Aside from the enormous size and exquisite priceless décor, both pools were fully heated, an incredible task even by today’s standards.

Talk about going big in everything you do! Both extravagant pools are still enjoyed today by visitors to the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California and their design continues to influence many custom pools built currently. Hearst loved his custom pools so much that he had 3 more built at his mansion in Beverley Hills, this estate is reported to be the highest valued private home in the USA with estimates of 160+million dollars or more. Everyone knows having a pool in your home increases its value, just imagine 3! We here at Custom Pool Pros in New Jersey can help you design and build your own custom Hearst “Neptune,” just give us a call and let’s start creating!

The swimming pool was the centerpiece of his infamous “parties” with the rich and famous in the LA scene. His swimming pool had some notorious stories surrounding it, including at least 2 deaths in which he was never connected directly. At one time Thorkildsen was on trial for some of his “misdeeds” and the judge couldn’t bear repeating the antics of Mr. Thorkildsen, allegedly being too raunchy for anyone with class to speak or hear!

Thorkildsen was one of the very first in modern history to use his private pool as a centerpiece for his lavish parties and this influenced anyone who had attended or heard of his events, soon this would catch on like wild fire and custom pools would be a must have by the social elite.

In the 20’s the glamorous movie stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford built a lavish custom pool at their mansion in Beverly Hills, California. It was thought to be one of the biggest pools in the entire world at the time. This incredible custom 100 feet long by 50 feet wide pool entertained the Hollywood elite and thus started the pool building frenzy of the rich and famous.

The magnificent pool and mansion became so famous that old postcards can be found with pictures of the “Pickfair” (the name coined from the last names of both Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford for their estate). The pool was so beautiful and appreciated it is still survives today on the estate despite the original mansion being torn down and rebuilt, but not the swimming pool!

Before the 1940’s swimming pools were usually in public places like the local city pool, amusement parks, schools and places of this nature and so the variations in pool shapes didn’t change much during this time. Public pools were designed to accommodate large numbers of swimmers and not much more. Private pools, however, were built only by the very rich. Few could afford pools before the 40’s but a few notable pools did exist such as the pool built in the late 1800’s by the “Ketchup King” Henry J. Heinz.

He built a swimming pool at his factory in Pennsylvania, amazingly for his staff. Heinz was one of those great men who valued every man and woman who worked for him and to help increase their desire for harmony and happiness in and out of the work place, H. J. built roof top gardens, gymnasiums, had doctors on staff and a place to eat for his employees but more importantly for our purposes, a gigantic Olympic sized swimming pool for all of his employees to enjoy from the bottom of ladder to the top.

People forget that back in these days there was no air-conditioning so in the incredibly hot humid summers, a nice cool swimming pool was the only relief from the misery. A public pool or the one like H. J. built for his workers was a blessing!

One of the best local pieces of history on the swimming pool takes us home to Bergen County, New Jersey! In 1898 an amusements park known as the Palisades Amusement Park was built. It was ahead of its time with incredible rides, events, games and became one of the most visited parks in the entire country during its heyday. In 1910 2 brothers from Fort Lee, New Jersey purchased the park and in 1912 they ordered a custom saltwater swimming pool to be designed and built. It was a monumental engineering task to build the grand pool but the brothers wanted something no one had ever seen before and that’s exactly what they got. The saltwater pool was over 400 feet by 600 feet in dimension and pumped salt water from the near by Hudson River! They built a giant waterfall that created waves that added a special element, it had patrons flocking from all parts of the US to see. The swimming pool drew so many people and was such a huge success for the park that the nearby town of Palisades Park almost changed their name to stop the confused visitors from showing up in their borough!

As you can see the swimming pool has taken a wonderful trip through time and has always been a source of pleasure for the human race. It doesn’t matter if you use a pool for exercise and health, play, relaxation, for it’s added beauty or anything else, it’s something that people use as a positive enhancement in their lives going back as long as history has been recorded. We here at Custom Pool Pros have been servicing Bergen, Cheery Hill, Fairfield, Freehold, Green Brook, Long Island, Mays Landing, Monmouth, Ocean, Jersey Shore and all the surrounding counties for years. We hope that when you are interested in building a custom swimming pool, need help with swimming pool designs, inground swimming pools, aboveground swimming pools, fiberglass pools, luxury pool installation and construction, you let us share our passion and knowledge with you. Call us today!

* Allen Guttmann, The Olympics: A History of the Modern Games (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992) 19.

One of the most influential times in recent history that had the most impact on modern pool building occurred in Greece in 1896. This was the first year the world celebrated the modern Olympic Games in Athens. Ironically it took the influence again of the great Greek civilization to bring back one of the favorite pastimes of the ancients. During these games the news went around the world that athletes representing 13 nations had competed in an incredible swimming spectacle.

The winner of the event was Alfred Hoyos Guttman who is quoted describing the event, “”I won ahead of the others with a big lead, but my greatest struggle was against the towering twelve-foot waves and the terribly cold water.”* Battling these brutal elements Guttman went on to receive the very first Gold Medal in swimming, thus sparking a worldwide interest in swimming as a sport and the mass wave of construction of swimming pools throughout the world. Today we see Olympic sized swimming pools in nearly every public school, university, gyms and community centers. You could say that all these pools have a direct line of influence to the very first modern Olympic Games in Greece!

One might wonder why this particular event drew so much attention and why I would write about it having so much of an influence on pool building but it’s easy to back up when you see just how many pools and where they were built immediately following these games. In the USA huge public swimming pools popped up all over the East Coast. In 1907 The Racquet Club of Philadelphia PA, for instance, built one of the very first aboveground swimming pools.

Aboveground swimming pools are still popular to this day and Custom Pool Pros in New Jersey specializes in every type of pool you can imagine! This same year a beautiful ship known as the RMS Adriatic (2nd) was built for the White Star Line, this ship had the distinction of being the very first ship with a swimming pool built onto it. It became the main focus for social activities while it traveled across the Atlantic between Europe and the United States. Now we all know that a cruise ship today wouldn’t be caught dead without a swimming pool! Interesting side note to the White Star Line is that the next class of ships built during this time were actually called “Olympic Class Liners,” one being the infamous Titanic!