A 42-foot perimeter-overflow pool set into a sloped North Scottsdale lot — built so the water meets the horizon without ever blocking the view that sold the house.
01 — THE SITE
The lot fell away eight feet from patio to property line, into protected desert that could not be disturbed. A conventional raised pool would have put a stucco wall in front of the McDowell views. The clients had already turned away two bids that proposed exactly that.
02 — THE DESIGN
We set the pool into the grade with a full perimeter overflow, so the waterline reads as a sheet of glass level with the deck. The catch basin doubles as the structural step down the slope. A sunken fire lounge sits below the water line — you look across the pool surface to the mountains with flame at your shoulder.
03 — THE BUILD
Perimeter overflow leaves no tolerance for settling — the waterline is the level. The shell rides on twelve caissons drilled to refusal, and the overflow edge was surveyed at steel, at shotcrete, and again at tile. Materials: limestone coping honed flat, glass-tile edge, pebble interior tuned to hold the sky's color.
Landscape, lighting and hardscape were built in the same mobilization — no second contractor, no re-trenching a finished yard.
04 — THE RESULT
"Every builder told us what the slope wouldn't allow. DCM told us what it made possible."
THE OWNERS — DESERT RIDGE, NORTH SCOTTSDALE