A large majority of pool builders may not be installing shotcrete correctly
William Drakeley grew up in the pool business. As a child, he would pick up garbage on the job site, following around the shotcrete crews. He finished school and became a banker, but he hated staying inside. So he worked for a few family pool companies and then, in 2000, started Drakeley Pool Company in Bethlehem, Connecticut.
He knew going into it that most pool businesses didn’t have the right educational training to correctly spray concrete at high velocity. So to distinguish Drakeley Pool Company, and himself from the others, he went back to school.
Drakeley trained under George Yoggy, concrete scientist and father of modern shotcrete in the United States. Over a 10-year period of study, Yoggy introduced him to the American Shotcrete Association (ASA) and the American Concrete Institute (ACI), including its technical guides, specifications and true material and application science for the sprayed concrete process.
Today, Drakeley is chairman of the ACI 506 Pool Shotcrete Committee, secretary of the ACI C660 Shotcrete Nozzlemen Certification Program, president of the ASA in 2016 and a technical shotcrete writer for several pool-trade publications.
The Basics
If you’re part of the in-ground pool industry, then you’re either using shotcrete or you’ve heard of it. However, the consensus is that many pool contractors aren’t up to date on shotcrete processes.
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