kanishadmin
… we think, YES! The stunning pool is built into a Berkshires limestone quarry in Sheffield, Massachusetts, on about 50 acres of land owned by the CEO of Mercedes Distrubution company, Joel Goldstein. (No, not that Mercedes) However, Goldstein didn’t actually build the pool himself. We learned the background story of this gorgeous body of water by talking to Michael Giannamore, the vice president of Aqua Pool & Patio, whose family is from Connecticut, originally built the pool.
However, we must give credit where credit is due! Goldstein did improve and beautify the property greatly, but the transformation of the quarry into a pool was the previous owner’s amazing DIY project. The property is “deep in the woods,” Giannamore told us, and she bought it solely because of the quarry, where she wanted a build her own “swimming hole”. She worked with no budget whatsoever, but she wanted the quarry to stay as intact as possible. That ruled out “the most logical and predictable” idea, Giannamore said concrete blocks lined with gunite (in human terms it’s basically just cement sprayed out of a fire hose), then covered with matching limestone.
That meant a large amount of uncertainty probably never experienced by pool builders before. The designers had no idea if the limestone pool would hold water. That’s a big red flag! They had to leave the quarry’s 3 already existing walls entirely untouched, and they had to be extremely careful when drilling into the quarrys floor. Weren’t there cracks in the limestone? we asked him. “Oh yeah!” Giannamore shouted. “They’re big, too!” For all the designers knew, the water would immediately leak right back out when they finished building and started to fill the pool — but the owner was willing to risk it and they went ahead and started filling it up!
The finished pool can hold about 15,000 gallons and measures roughly 20 by 40 feet. The pool is 3 feet at its shallowest and 7 feet at the deepest. The adjoining house — which we’re told was expanded from a simple poolhouse into a weekend home — is roughly 3,500 square feet.
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So how’s the quarry pool doing since it was built 15 years ago? “Better than most swimming pools,” Giannamore told us. “It holds water perfectly.” Evaporation isn’t really a problem, either, however it is a “service struggle,” he said, because you can’t cover the pool during winter like a regular swimming pool. So every year it gets bombarded with leaves, sticks and debris, requiring a power wash after the pool is fully drained; then it’s filled right back up up with chlorinated water for a new swim season.
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