Best Practices
Custom tatami mats from Japan cover the floor surrounded by the fish pond.
Tea Time!
Brewing a formal, Japanese-style koi pond by Kent Wallace, Living Water Solutions
A
bout a year and a half ago, I received a call from interior designer Lisa Bozak of Design Therapy here in Las Vegas. Her client was doing a backyard makeSERIES: Best Pond Practices over that surrounded the back side of his swimming This is an installment of an ongoing, multi-part series. pool, and the new addition included a pool house with Be sure to watch for further a Japanese-style tea house installments in future issues! incorporated into the design. The client wanted a narrow koi pond surrounding the square center of the room with a floor covered in tatami mats. When I arrived, the foundation of the July/August 2022
building was formed, and the layout for the koi pond was just being created. This was good timing, because the foundation hadn’t been poured yet, and no plumbing had yet begun.
Sealing the Deal The pond was only about 24 inches wide inside and slightly rectangular, with each side about 15 to 16 feet long. A sliding door next to the pool had a floor-level bridge that was to be poured with the foundation and another slightly wider-slab bridge that led into a kitchen area. Because the interior koi pond was part of the foundation on the left and back sides, it would have to be sealed with polyurea. I could just envision how irritated Paul Parszik of Artisan Aquatics would be, crawling POND Trade Magazine 55
