What Is A Gunite Swimming Pool Exactly?
Every few days we hear, “What is Gunite?”. So here is a short introduction to gunite.
In the early 1900s, Carl Akeley came up with a method of spraying plaster onto animal-shaped wireframes. His true hobby was taxidermy, imagine that.
Back then he would pass a dry plaster into a pressurized chamber. He then would pass compressed air through a nozzle mixing powder and water at the end.
The product was so successful it would eventually be trademarked as Gunite. The consistency was different than premixed and troweled on applications, so it eventually became the preferred method for pouring inground swimming pools.
So a gunite swimming pool is a concrete swimming pool using the above-mentioned concrete mixing method.
Later Technology Allows For Commercialization And Then Swimming Pools
Of course, the story doesn’t end there. It wasn’t until 1910, that a cement gun was created of which transformed the construction industry and then the swimming pool industry.
This gun paved the way, along with the creation of gunite made cement, for the modern-day swimming pool.
What is Built With Gunite Besides Swimming Pools
Bridges, dams, reservoirs, pools, tanks, canals, docks, slopes, tunnels, pipelines are and have been constructed using Gunite. Over time, the multitude of applications made gunite expansion inevitable.
What Is A Shortcrete Swimming Pool?
In the 1930s, the term Shotcrete began to recognize a difference in the cement mixing process. Eventually, gunite would refer to a dry mix and shotcrete would represent a wet mix process. Both are cement making processes.
Gunite was the trademarked term for the material produced by the dry mixing process and shortcrete is the name attached to the wet-mixing process. Eventually, shortcrete would include a dry mixing style as well.
Does Gunite Still Refer To A Trademarked Product?
No, in 1971, the trademark ran out and it became a part of the English language describing a method to concrete mixing.
Still to this day defined by Webster’s Gunite; Gun·ite \ trademark used for a mixture of cement, sand, and water sprayed onto a metal mold.
