Business View Magazine September 2018

38 39 LATHAM POOL PRODUCTS, INC. build the same pool that you build in Florida, in New York, because of the frost line. A gunite guy would have to go from building a three-inch wall to a foot-and-a-half wall as a result of the frost line, which becomes cost prohibitive. So, vinyl liners and package pools have played a bigger role in the market, especially outside of the sand states.” Latham manufactures over 150 different mod- els and styles of fiberglass pools across three brands –Viking, Trilogy, and Blue Hawaiian. “A homeowner will choose what style pool will fit their lifestyle and backyard and they will go out and contract with a local pool builder. The pool builder buys the pool from us. It takes about three to four weeks to manufacture a pool. Once it’s ready to be shipped, the homeowner and pool builder decide on the delivery date, and it usually gets delivered on a 54-foot trailer, or any trailer that fits within state transportation regulations. The dealer will dig the hole, place the pool in the hole, and do all the backfill, plumbing, and land- scaping needs.” “It’s very similar on the package pool side,” says Cappiello. “Package pools are polymer or steel panel pools with vinyl liners holding the water, but it’s the same concept. They do their research on what kind of pool they want, what style they want. Then they contact their local builder and the builder buys the panels from us that we manufac- ture in our 24 locations. A package pool kit would show up at the home on pallets, and the dealer would show up, dig a hole and install that kit on site. It comes in components which the dealer assembles and installs.” “Package pools have no size limitation,” says Fox. “They come on pallets; there’s no transportation concern, so if a consumer wants an extremely wide pool or a customized type of pool, a package pool is the option because there’s no limitations to size. Fiberglass pools are bound by the limitations of the Department of Transportation.” Fox explains the physical characteristics of its fiberglass pools, and what separates them from the competition: “From a material standpoint, the outside layer that you see in the pool is our premium finish or gel coat layer.That’s what gives it the beautiful color, the blues the greens–that’s the finish.The second layer is a vinyl ester resin layer.We call it the VE layer, and that’s what holds the water - that’s the water barrier.The third layer is our differentiator: that’s the structural component that provides the strength to the pool. In our Viking brand,we back our pool with ceramic material to create that strength; in our Blue Hawaiian brand, our strength barrier is backed by carbon fiber; and in our Trilogy brand,we use a bimax radius re-enforcement in our structural component. So those are three different ways and composites that we use, but all three are under very rigorous strength testing and thickness testing.” Cappiello follows with an explanation of the company’s five-year-old, market-leading, “ul- tra-seam” technology, which virtually eliminates seam lines in a vinyl liner pool: “Vinyl liners are Trust the pump designed specifically for quenching its thirst on excess pool cover water. The automatic Little Giant® APCP-1700 is certified, simple to use, reliable, and built to gulp. Little Giant ® Big Thirst lg-outdoor.com