[4seasons]

Those of you that have scaped around a pool--- When large boulders are incorporated into the pool itself are they sitting on a ledge or are the poured around. Not talking about the fake ones.
Are they dry stacked or mortared into place?
I have a customer who is going to have a pool installed and I want to be as knowledgable about it as poosible.

[zullo-design]

Ill try and find you some pictures but our pools are all cement wall so we sit the rocks on the beam and then pack some concrete to fill in the voids and secure them and keep them from rocking, if they are very large and most of the rock sits outside of the pool we'll support that with RCA or concrete.

[agla]

We would use a 2' bond beam when designing the pool. Then we would try to have no voids under and around the rocks at all by using a lot of mortar.

[4seasons]

that's what I'm looking for. Maybe not all the way around, excuse my ignorance, but what is a bond beam? Makes me wish it was summer!

[Fine Edge]

The bond beam is actually the top of the wall of the pool, we see it around 8" -10" thick. Of course that is not supporting any large boulders.
Your bond beam would be reinforced with rebar and tie into the rest of the pool shell.
In agla's picture, the boulders are resting on the bond beam.

[agla]

Yes, this gunite pool was designed with the extrawide bond beam specifically to do this stone work.

Normally, this company does a 12" bond beam to accept bluestone or limestone coping that is directly mortared to it. Then the rest of the pool decking is done on its own steel reinforced concrete slab with an expansion joint separating it from the coping (finished edge of the pool)

[4seasons]

That helps alot.
Will natural boulders(sandstone) affect the pool water in any way if we built a lip down in the water?