The Shaughnessy Pool
INDOOR/OUTDOOR LAP POOL · SHAUGHNESSY · VANCOUVER, BC
A Shaughnessy crawlspace that became something nobody expected — a 45-foot saltwater lap pool, open to the sky and usable year-round. The kind of project that makes you stop and ask how it was even done.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
A Pool Nobody Saw Coming
Shaughnessy is one of Vancouver’s most established neighbourhoods — fine homes, mature trees, quiet streets. The client had lived here for years and renovated his home two decades prior. What he wanted next was not a backyard pool. He wanted something entirely different: a lap pool he could use every morning, built into the basement of his home, open to the outdoors but protected enough to swim year-round.
Senior designer Leo Chester led the project from concept through to completion. What followed was one of the most technically complex builds Kerr Design Build has undertaken — involving arborists, mechanical engineers, city approvals, and a construction method that had no real precedent in the neighbourhood. The result is a 10-foot wide by 45-foot long saltwater pool, carved out of what was once a crawlspace, sitting beneath the living area of the house and open to the elements on one side. It is remarkable.
TYPE OF PROJECT: Basement Crawlspace Conversion — Indoor/Outdoor Pool
LOCATION: Shaughnessy, Vancouver, BC
SITE: Oceanfront · Odyssey Lane
DESIGNER: Leo Chester, Kerr Design Build
STATUS: Completed
SCOPE: Crawlspace Excavation · Saltwater Lap Pool (10′ x 45′) · Natural Ventilation System · Motorized Pool Cover · Heated Pool Deck · Sandstone & Porcelain Finishes · Sauna Room · Concrete Retaining Walls
Not a Pool in a Basement. Something Better.
Open to the elements, usable all year
This is not a pool enclosed in a basement — it is a crawlspace converted into an outdoor space that sits beneath the living area above. Walk down from the garden and you are on the pool deck. A motorized cover reduces heat loss in winter and a heated deck keeps it comfortable year-round, long after every other outdoor pool in the neighbourhood has been drained.
Concrete, sandstone, and real materials throughout
The client had no interest in substitutes. Concrete walls were kept as the finish — raw and permanent. Sandstone edges the pool. Porcelain pavers cover the deck. Aqua board handles the moisture above. Every material chosen to last and to look exactly like what it is.
Natural ventilation — a smarter solution
Get the moisture wrong and the house rots from within. Mechanical engineers ran the airflow calculations. The solution: windowless openings through the concrete retaining walls and large-format fans at low velocity. No mechanical extraction. No waste. Just air moving the way it should.
Invisible from the street
From the front path, all you notice is a band of concrete at the base of the wall — a surgical incision into the lower corner of the house. Only once you are in the garden does the full scale of what lies below reveal itself.
What It Took to Make It Happen
The site had two significant constraints that needed to be resolved before a single permit could be issued.
The pool’s required size meant it had to extend into the backyard — a space with limited room and many large established trees. An arborist was hired to expose roots and assess soil conditions, providing the city with the documentation needed to move forward without damaging the trees.
Moisture was the second challenge. Mechanical engineers modelled the airflow required to keep humidity from building up in the structure above. Getting this wrong would have compromised the entire house. The natural ventilation solution that came out of that process is one of the smartest things about the project.
City approvals also took time — the uniqueness of the build meant there was no standard path through the process. The Kerr team worked through it.
The Sauna That Just Fit
Warm cedar and timber give this Ucluelet custom home its character and tie it to the surrounding forest — natural materials chosen to weather the coast honestly rather than fight it. Board-formed concrete anchors the base with quiet monumentality, robust enough to withstand the harsh west coast conditions and storm events the site demands. The slender timber columns, trellises, privacy screens and circular skylights are the details that turn a code-driven envelope into something people will genuinely love arriving at — day after day, year after year.
DESIGNED BY
Leo Chester · Senior Designer
Leo Chester is a senior designer at Kerr Design Build with deep experience in complex residential projects across Vancouver. The Shaughnessy Pool is one of his most celebrated works — a project that required him to solve problems that had no established precedent and deliver something the client had never seen built before.
In Leo’s words: “It’s pretty remarkable when you see this giant opening in the back of this house. I love it because I love seeing the modern and old combined — especially when the old is really old. You get this cool contrast. You love the surprise factor because when you get a glimpse, you think: what is that? What’s going on here?”
