By Jennifer Martin

fter 37 years in the swimming pool
business, Lou Downes has many unique memories. But one of his favorites
has to do with a 70-foot-high crane swinging boulders around – slowly – in a client’s
back yard.
“We were building this enormous granite boulder wall beneath a second-floor balcony,”
he says. “The idea was that a waterfall would cascade from the spa on this balcony, then splash over the boulders and fall into a gigantic swimming pool. It was a spectacular idea. But these boulders were the size of Volkswagens. So it took a little engineering to place them in the back yard – to find their ‘best side,’ so to speak.”
But when the project was finished, it evoked a miniature waterfall in the Caribbean, an escape to a different world. There are swimming pools, and then there are works of hydro art, as Downes will tell you. And the difference is all in the creativity of the planner.
“I remember one guy who took a picture of a great white shark underwater in Hawaii,” says Downes, the owner of Downes Swimming Pools Company, in Arlington Heights. “He wanted to work that photo into his swimming pool somehow. So we brainstormed and came up with the idea of a 3-D shark photograph on the bottom of the pool.”
Downes had the work done by Craig-Bagdy, a tile company in Europe that’s known for creating decorative tiles for some of the grandest palaces in the Middle East. The company overlaid the shark photo on wet clay, hiding the tile and grout lines within the image. “It made a pretty dramatic effect in the pool,” Downes said. “It’s like swimming over an actual shark.”
Downes’ pool artists come up with an infinite array of ideas depending on the client’s taste. His showroom even has computer software where pool and landscaping plans can come to life in three dimensions for his clients. “It makes the process more comfortable,” he said. “People can really visualize how something’s going to look. And we can show them other possibilities that they might not have thought of.”
Downes entered the swimming pool business in 1970 as a college student who had recently been discharged from the Army. He realized that a summertime job cleaning pools in some of the nicest neighborhoods in Chicago was, overall, a pretty cushy job. In 1974, his maintenance business was thriving so he branched into pool construction and design.
“Back then, nobody was really building pools with a lot of thought,” he said. “They’d use iron fittings, which would rust, and they’d use paint which wore off really quickly. If you talk to someone who had a pool 40 years ago, they’ll tell you that every spring involved a three- to four-week process to get the pool cleaned up, painted and running again.”
By networking with engineers and architects, Downes came up with his own standards. His company uses a high-duration plaster finish, extra steel bars for support, double-strength PVC piping and extra-wide pool walls for durability. “We don’t just build to industry standards; we exceed them,” he says.
And his craftsmen have endless ways of bringing out the fullest potential in a pool or spa. A vanishing edge where the water spills into a mini-pool for the kids; stone walls that resemble the vertical outcroppings of western canyons; a sand-colored stairway with inlaid patterns of seashells…Downes Pools can create an array of beautiful accents. And no job is too large. Downes is working on a multi-year project right now involving both indoor and outdoor pools for a 40,000-square-foot house in Inverness.
“We do 45 to 60 new projects a year, but I don’t really keep a close count,” Downes says. “How many projects are too many? It’s hard to say. We just enjoy what we’re doing.”
Once a pool is built, the company can take care of upkeep and maintenance. Downes has tried to model the company after the Nordstrom’s concept – one-stop-shopping. “Whatever it is, we’ll take care of it,” he says.
As for Downes himself, he has a spectacular pool at his home in Florida that even has golf course views. But one section – the tanning ledge – is permanently claimed by two family members: an English setter and a Labrador.  “We really built the tanning ledge for the dogs,” Downes says. “What can I say? They like to lie in the sun. And they’re not moving.”

Downes Swimming Pools Company
725 W. University Drive
Arlington Heights, IL 60004
Toll free: 1-800-939-9309
(847) 398-7665 (phone)
(847) 637-1880 (fax)
www.downespool.com
sales@downespool.com