Lake Travis — Hillside Pool & Spa

The site problem

The building pad was small and the lot fell hard toward Lake Travis over broken rock. The owners wanted a full pool, a spa, and room to lie in the sun looking west — three things that on a flat lot want fifty feet of width the hill did not have. Everything had to be stacked down the slope instead of spread across it, without the result looking like a set of concrete steps.

What we built

Three terraces cut into the grade and held with stone-clad retaining walls. The main 44-foot pool sits on the widest terrace with a lake-facing perimeter-overflow edge. A raised spa spills into the pool from the terrace above, and a lounging deck steps down to the water on the third. Because each wall doubles as retaining and as pool structure, the hill is doing part of the engineering — the reason a stacked layout like this is cheaper than fighting the slope flat.

The stone cladding is a dark split-face that ties the built walls to the outcrop they grew from. From the loungers the pool edge, the spa spillway and the lake horizon line up at golden hour, which is the whole reason the pool exists.

Specifications

Size	44 ft × 16 ft pool, 7 ft raised spa
Construction	Gunite on three stone-clad retaining terraces
Finish	Mid-tone quartz interior, split-face stone cladding & coping
Features	Perimeter-overflow edge, spillover spa, tanning ledge, stepped lounge deck
Timeline	20 weeks
Cost band	$210,000–$245,000

They stacked the whole thing down the rock so we never lost the view. Now the pool, the spa and the lake all sit on one line.

— The homeowners, Lake Travis

Next project — Westlake Courtyard