Engineering confidence below the surface
Structural engineering software for swimming pools.
A custom pool is a water-retaining concrete structure, and before a city issues a permit somebody has to prove it will hold. H2Structure reads the design file and the soil report and drafts the whole structural package in hours instead of weeks.
The software drafts. The engineer decides. The seal is always a person's.
And Vanessa, the built-in AI assistant, sits with you the whole way — citing the calc line behind every answer, handing anything she cannot back up to a licensed engineer, and never touching the seal.
Version 0.9.5. In pilot with a founding group of builders in Dallas–Fort Worth.
A custom pool is a water-retaining concrete structure.
Before a city will issue a permit, someone has to prove it will hold: the walls against the soil pushing in when the pool is empty, the floor against the water pushing down, the whole shell against groundwater trying to lift it out of the ground.
Today that proof is produced by hand
A small engineering firm works it up from a PDF of the designer's drawing and returns a sealed set in ten to fifteen business days. The design is finished, the client has signed, and the job sits.
H2Structure drafts it in hours
It reads the design file the designer already exported and the geotechnical report the builder already paid for, and drafts the entire structural package — calculations, an 11×17 sheet set, the reinforcement schedule, the hydraulics through to total dynamic head, the equipment pad, and a budgetary estimate.
A licensed professional engineer reviews every decision and applies the seal. The structural drawing goes back to the designer as a layer over their own work.
The order never changes
The software drafts. The engineer decides. The seal is always a person's. There is no setting that skips the review, and nothing leaves H2Structure as a sealed document until an engineer of record has put their name on it.
You already know all of this.
None of it is news to anyone who has waited on a stamped set while a client waits on a start date. It is just never written down in one place.
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10–15business days
That is what a structural set costs you in calendar time.
Typical turnaround from the firms most pool builders use. The design is finished, the client has signed, and the job sits.
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2Doutline only
What leaves a design tool is a flat outline.
Depths sit in text callouts, structure is not in the file at all, and neither are hydraulics or quantities. Everything the engineer needs gets re-entered by hand, from a PDF, by someone who was not in the design meeting.
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Halfof builders
More than half of builders are not paid for design work.
Design and engineering are absorbed into the sale. Every week of delay is a week of carrying cost on work nobody billed for.
AQUA Magazine, 2026 State of the Industry -
Afterthe fact
Plan-check comments arrive once the drawing is already done.
A city asks for the same detail it asked for last time. The set goes back, the engineer re-opens it, and two more weeks disappear into a comment you could have answered on day one.
H2Structure attacks the calendar time, not the engineering judgement. The judgement stays with a licensed engineer.
Six steps, and you are back in your own software.
Two files in. A sealed package out. Nothing to redraw, no new modelling tool to learn, no data entry.
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Read the design
Drop the DXF or DWG your designer already exports — from AutoCAD or any other design tool that writes one. The water outline, the depth zones, the spa, the shelf, the edge condition and the features come out of your layer names and text callouts.
You · 30 seconds
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Read the soil
Drop the geotechnical PDF. Bearing, expansion index, plasticity, water table per boring, equivalent fluid pressure and settlement come out with the page and the sentence they came from.
You · 30 seconds
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Engineer it
A deterministic pass sizes the shell, the reinforcement, the bond beam, the floor, the piers and the weir wall against ACI 318-19, ACI 350-20, ISPSC 2024, ASCE 7-22 and IBC 1808, then prices the bill of quantities.
H2Structure · one pass
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See it
Stress maps show where the shell works hardest before anyone excavates. Every parameter shows where it came from, and every check reads pass, review or fail.
You and the engineer
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PE review and seal
A licensed engineer works the checklist section by section, accepts or modifies each calculation, writes their notes, and applies the seal. Sealing is gated and irreversible.
Professional engineer of record
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Deliver back to CAD
The structural layers come back at your origin and in your units — over your original drawing where your tool takes a CAD reference layer, and as a permit-ready sheet set keyed to that drawing where its import is lossy.
You · in your own software
One button. The whole package.
Not a report about your pool — the documents you hand to a plan checker, a rebar sub and an estimator. Sheets are 11×17 and drawn to scale.
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calcs.pdf
The calculation package, line-numbered. Every line names its basis — a code clause, a page of your geotech report, or one of your own standards — plus the decision record and the seal page.
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sheets.pdf
The 11×17 sheet set:
S-0cover, notes and specifications ·S-1structural plan ·S-2reinforcement plan and schedule ·S-3sections ·S-4typical details ·S-5foundation and drilled piers when the site needs them ·P-1hydraulics and equipment pad when the pool has circuits to plumb. -
structural.dxf
Your original drawing with
S-SHELL,S-REBAR,S-NOTES,S-DIMS,S-PLUMBandS-EQUIPoverlaid on top — same origin, same units. Open it where you drew it, or bring it in as a reference layer under the design you already have. -
rebar.csv
The rebar schedule: mark, size, spacing, length, count and weight. Send it to your steel supplier without retyping anything.
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estimate.csv
A budgetary bill of quantities priced from your own unit costs, by category. Edit the unit prices once and every project uses them.
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A record that cannot be quietly changed
The seal binds to the SHA-256 hash of every input file, and the audit log is hash-chained, so an altered input or a back-dated entry shows up. Anyone with the verify link sees the engineer, the run and the chain status without logging in.
The 11×17 sheets and the calc package carry a preliminary — not for construction banner until the engineer of record applies the seal. That is deliberate: a draft should look like a draft.
See where the shell works hardest before anyone pours concrete.
A grotto sitting over a nine-foot wall is the kind of thing that looks fine in plan and shows up red here — while it still costs a phone call to fix, not a demolition.
Demand over capacity, every two feet around the shell.
The same cantilever arithmetic as the calc sheet, evaluated segment by segment: equivalent fluid pressure plus surcharge, factored, against the section actually designed. Floor cells get bearing and uplift. The five worst segments are numbered so the engineer and the crew are looking at the same spot.
Feature surcharges land where you drew them. If the DXF puts the rock feature at the deep-end corner, that is the corner that lights up.
Layers you can turn on and off
- Flexure
- Shear
- Depth
- Surcharge
- Bearing
- Uplift
- Piping
- Rebar
- Piers
- Features
Green is at or below 0.70 of capacity, amber 0.70–0.90, orange 0.90–1.00, red above 1.00. A red segment is a conversation with the engineer, not an error message.
The plumbing is engineered too, not guessed at.
Every hydraulic circuit — filtration, spa, vanishing edge, waterfall, laminars —
gets its own total dynamic head and its own pump, worked out from the same drawing that
produced the shell. It comes back as sheet P-1.
Total dynamic head, itemised in feet
Suction and return are computed separately and summed. Pipe friction is Hazen-Williams at C = 150 for PVC, the convention of this industry; fittings are converted to equivalent length of the same pipe rather than lumped into a percentage. Equipment losses are taken at the dirty-filter set point, not the clean one, so the pump still makes flow when the filter is loaded. Raised spas, grottos, slides and vanishing edges add their static lift, and velocity head is carried rather than ignored.
The pump is selected against a curve
The circuit's system curve is H = H_static + k·Q^1.852 — the Hazen-Williams exponent, so the curve passes through the design point exactly. Intersect it with a pump curve and you have the operating point: the flow and head the pump will actually run at, the speed it needs, the turnover that produces against the turnover required, and an estimated input power in watts.
- Pipe sized to the velocity limit 6 ft/s on suction and 8 ft/s on return, per ISPSC 2024 §310, with the velocity printed beside each line so an oversized run is visible.
- A valve schedule with stable tags Valves are tagged V-1 upward in a fixed order, and the same tag means the same valve on the sheet, in the DXF and on the pad.
- An equipment pad that can be serviced Pumps, filters and heaters are laid out with their front and side service clearances drawn, the pad sized around them, and the headers routed.
- Sheet P-1, in the same set Hydraulics and the equipment pad print with the structural sheets, and the head lines run into the calc package like any other calculation.
The equipment data is representative, and the product says so. The pump curves, the fitting equivalent lengths and the equipment losses built into the engine are realistic in shape and magnitude for the class of equipment — they are not any manufacturer's published curve or published loss, and H2Structure does not ship one. They give you a sound design and a defensible number to plan around. Every one of them is overridable, and before construction the selected equipment's own published data replaces them.
It reads the drawing your designer already made.
You do not change software and your designer does not redraw anything. H2Structure reads any design tool that exports DXF or DWG — export the file, keep your layer names, and the geometry comes across.
What comes out of a DXF
The water outline from any layer named for the pool. Depths from the text callouts already
in plan — 3'-6", SUN SHELF 9", DEEP 8' — ordered along
the length, with slopes inferred between them and step-downs at shelves and benches.
Features from layer names or from a label next to the geometry. The geometry gives the
size; the label gives the extras, so SPA RAISED 12" 8 JETS reads as all three.
- Depth zones
- Slopes and step-downs
- Spa
- Sun shelf
- Beach entry
- Vanishing edge
- Catch basin
- Perimeter overflow
- Raised walls
- Grotto and waterfall
- Slide
- Sheer descents
- Laminar jets
- Fire features
- Acrylic window
- Equipment pad
Matching is case-insensitive and tolerant of dashes, underscores, dots and
plurals. AIA-style names work too: P-POOL, P-SPA,
P-VANISH-EDGE. Nothing is locked in — everything it found is listed for you
to check and edit before the run.
And what goes back
Where your tool supports a CAD reference layer — AutoCAD, Revit, Vectorworks, Rhino, SketchUp, Chief Architect — the engineered drawing comes straight back over your original design, at your origin and in your units.
Where a tool's import is lossy you get a permit-ready sheet set and a CAD file keyed to the original drawing instead. A structural drawing is mostly the things a lossy import drops — dimensions, callouts, schedules, notes, line weights — and we would rather say so than promise a round trip your software cannot make.
Every parameter says where it came from — your design file, a page of the geotech report, a precedent, or a default you can override. Nothing arrives without a source.
Someone is sitting next to you the whole way.
Vanessa is H2Structure's AI assistant. She explains anything on the screen, takes you to where it lives, and can do the next step once you say go — and she cites the file page, calc line or code clause behind every answer she gives.
She answers from your project, not from the internet
Ask why the wall came out 12 inches and you get the calculation, the clause it satisfies and the geotech page the soil number was read from — as links you can open and check. Ask something your records cannot answer and she says so, and puts it in front of a licensed engineer who replies in the same conversation. She never states an adequacy or a safety conclusion that is not literally on a cited line, and she never discusses price or liability.
What she is allowed to do is a short, fixed list
Open a screen, run the guided walkthrough, run engineering, run site intelligence, request a PE review, or hand a question to a person. That is the whole list, and it is defined in code rather than decided in a conversation. Two rules keep it honest: she can only offer a step the project's own action list already says is open, and she can only reach something your own role could reach directly.
She cannot seal anything, and the list cannot be talked into growing. Applying a seal is a licensed engineer's act and is simply not among the things she can do. Uploading a file and drawing the floor profile stay with the person at the keyboard too — she says so rather than pretending otherwise.
Nothing happens until you say yes
Anything that changes the project is proposed first, in plain words, with what it will do spelled out beside the button. When you confirm, the audit log records two entries: that Vanessa proposed it and that you approved it. Months later a reviewing engineer can see exactly where an assistant was involved and who agreed to it.
- Says she is an AI, every time
- Cites a source on every answer
- Escalates instead of guessing
- Confirms before it writes
- Two audit entries per action
- Cannot seal
She also carries getting started. Progress moves on what actually exists in the workspace — a design file that was uploaded, a run that happened — not on ticked boxes, so you can skip around and pick it up anywhere.
Your standards, preserved.
Every good builder has rules that are tougher than the code, learned from a plan check or a warranty claim. H2Structure records them as rules and applies them on every project, so the thing your best superintendent knows does not leave with them.
For each structural decision, five columns line up side by side: the H2Structure practice standard, the code minimum, what the calculation actually asks for, your own standard, and the value that governs.
| Decision | H2Structure standard | Code minimum | Calculation | Your standard | Final |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wall reinforcement | #4 @ 12″ | ≤ 18″ o.c. | #5 @ 10″ | #5 @ 8″ | #5 @ 8″ |
| Wall thickness | 8″ | 6″ | 12″ | — | 12″ |
| Floor thickness | 6″ | 6″ | 8″ (EI ≥ 50) | 8″ | 8″ |
| Earth-side cover | 3.0″ | 2.0″ | 2.0″ | 3.0″ | 3.0″ |
Deep-end walls at or above 8 ft: the calculation asks for #5 @ 10″, the house standard says #5 @ 8″, so the final is #5 @ 8″. Your standard governs when it is more conservative — never less. The reason it exists is stored with it, and it prints in the decision page of the calc package so the engineer can see why.
Your standards stay yours. They live in your workspace, they are not shared with other builders, and they are not used to train anything outside your company.
Where those rules come from, and who gets to approve one.
Point H2Structure AI at what you have already built and it reads the archive for the rules you have been following all along. It proposes. A licensed engineer decides. Nothing becomes a standard on the software's say-so.
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Ingest the archive
Past sealed sets, geotech reports, plan-check comments, change orders and field notes go in. They are grouped back into projects and every value keeps the file and the page it was read from.
Your files · once
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Propose a rule
H2Structure AI looks for what you do consistently — a wall section, a floor, a cover — and writes it as a candidate in plain language with the sealed projects that support it. A pattern that holds on one or two jobs is not a rule and is not offered as one.
H2Structure AI · proposes only
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An engineer approves it
Each candidate is accepted or rejected by a licensed engineer, and only they can do it. An accepted rule gets an ID like CS-107, a plain-language statement and its reason, and the decision is written to the audit log with their name on it.
Professional engineer
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It governs the next design
From then on the rule is applied on new projects and shows up in the decision record beside the code minimum and the calculation, so anyone reading the set can see which rule moved a number and why.
Every project after it
Then the jobs report back
Plan-check comments, inspection results, change orders, warranty issues and PE modifications are recorded against the project they happened on. A rule that keeps passing plan check earns its place. A rule that keeps drawing the same comment gets flagged for the engineer to look at again — which is the part that makes it a flywheel rather than a filing cabinet.
Your archive trains your workspace and nothing else. What H2Structure learns from your projects is applied to your projects. It is not pooled, not shared with another builder, and not used to improve anyone else's defaults.
A licensed engineer signs it. Not software.
H2Structure drafts. A professional engineer of record reviews, modifies where their judgement differs, and seals. That order never changes, and there is no way to skip it.
- Section by section, not all at once The engineer sees every calculation with its verdict — pass, review or fail — and accepts, modifies or comments on each one. Their modifications become part of the record.
- The seal is bound to the inputs Sealing hashes every input file into the seal itself. Swap a drawing after the fact and the package no longer verifies — quietly editing an approved set is not possible.
- The audit log is hash-chained Upload, edit, run, review, modification, seal: each entry carries the hash of the one before it. A removed or back-dated entry breaks the chain and shows as broken.
- Routed to a PE licensed in your state Request review and the project goes to an engineer licensed in the jurisdiction it will be built in, with their capacity, fee and turnaround shown before you send it.
- Anyone can verify it A public link shows the engineer, the seal, the run and the audit-chain status. Hand it to a plan checker, a lender or a homeowner. No account needed.
For the firms that seal pool structures.
H2Structure is licensed to structural engineering firms as well as to builders. Your own PE works in it and seals in it. We do not replace the firm and we do not sign anything: the engineer stays in responsible charge, and the seal is theirs.
Every decision on the record, before anyone seals it
Transparency is the profession's stated first concern about AI in structural practice — 85% of the engineers NCSEA surveyed named it. So there is no black box to take on faith. For every element, the decision record lines up the code minimum beside what the calculation actually asks for beside your firm's own standard, with the reason each one exists and the clause or report page it came from.
The AI proposes; a licensed engineer approves. Nothing governs a design until they do, and each approval is written to the hash-chained log with their name on it. A reviewer, a peer, a plan checker or an expert three years from now reads the same record you did.
What the drafting hour becomes
The firm's throughput stops being a function of how fast a drafter can produce a set. The same licensed engineers seal more pools per day, because what lands on the desk is a line-numbered draft rather than a PDF and a phone call — and every set that leaves the office is drawn to the same standard, whoever ran it.
Responsible charge
H2Structure is a drafting and calculation tool inside your practice. It does not offer engineering services, does not hold a seal, and produces nothing you have not reviewed. Renovatio Intl, Inc. is not an engineering firm.
- The decision record Code minimum, calculation, firm standard and the governing value side by side for every element, each with its reason and its source. It prints in the calc package.
- More pools per licensed engineer Review time replaces drafting time. The judgement and the liability stay exactly where they were; the data entry is what leaves.
- One standard across a production line Your firm's standards are recorded once and applied on every project, so a set does not depend on which drafter was free that week.
- Your standards, approved by your engineer Candidate rules read out of your own sealed archive are proposed in plain language with the projects that support them. Only a licensed engineer can accept one.
- Your workspace, your data What H2Structure learns from your projects is applied to your projects. It is not pooled, not shared with another firm, and not used to train anyone else's defaults.
What a reviewer usually asks first
| The question | What the engine does |
|---|---|
| Which face carries the wall steel? | Both, designed separately. The empty-and-backfilled case puts the water face in tension and sets the inner mat at water-face cover; first filling — pool full before backfill — reverses the moment onto the earth face, and that mat is sized from its own factored demand at earth-face cover. Cover is per face throughout: 3 in against earth, 2 in on the water side, applied to whichever face is actually in tension for the element. |
| Is the horizontal steel designed or assumed? | Designed. It carries the greater of the ACI 350 §7.12 shrinkage-and-temperature requirement and, on a wall curved in plan, the hoop tension γw·h·R — checked both at the service stress limit and at strength, with the worse governing. A curved wall can be adequate in bending and still crack through; a flexural check never sees it. |
| What factor of safety on flotation? | 2.0 on the empty shell, per the Foundation Performance Association guidelines — one number, used by every check in the package. A hydrostatic relief valve is called for regardless, per ISPSC §306. |
| What load combinations are formed? | Six, printed with their factors and their clause: empty with soil and surcharge, full before backfill, full with soil in place, buoyancy, and the seismic case above SDC C. The table names which one governs and by how much. |
| Where does the strip model stop being valid? | It says so, by element and by name. Re-entrant corners, curved walls, depth transitions, raised walls, weir-and-basin assemblies and penetrations are detected and escalated to the engineer of record rather than silently computed. Two supplementary checks quantify what the strip cannot see — a crossing-strip corner estimate and the hoop membrane force — and the corner one is reported, never graded, because a plate or finite-element analysis governs that detail. |
| Are the demand-to-capacity ratios real numbers? | Every one of them, or none at all. A check that is a detailing trigger rather than a demand-versus-capacity comparison shows an em dash where a ratio would be. Nothing in that table is a constant chosen to look like a calculation. |
| What is not designed? | Named rather than implied: no deflection or displacement check; drilled piers carry axial capacity only, with no lateral analysis, group effect or downdrag; construction staging and saturated backfill are not among the load cases; cove dowels, waterstops, penetration trim and coping are drawn to detail rather than calculated. Those go to the engineer of record, and the domain-of-validity statement says so in the package. |
It understands the things that make these pools expensive.
Seventeen features, each one carrying its own consequences: what it does to the structure, what it demands hydraulically, and what it adds to the estimate. A vanishing edge is not a finish option — it is a weir wall built to a sixteenth of an inch and a basin sized for surge.
- Attached spa
- Sun shelf
- Beach entry
- Lazy river
- Vanishing edge
- Perimeter overflow
- Acrylic window
- Swim-up bar
- Cold plunge
- Grotto / waterfall
- Slide
- Sheer descents
- Laminar jets
- Fire features
- LED lighting
- Automatic cover
- Raised walls
Add a grotto and the rock mass surcharges the bond beam and the wall behind it, the waterfall pump and its pipe run get sized, and the quantities and cost lines move. Change the drawing and all three change together.
H2Structure was developed alongside one of the country's top luxury pool builders, on real Dallas–Fort Worth projects: expansive clay, hillside lots and vanishing edges over a drop.
Their sealed history is what the engine was checked against, and their standards are what the Builder DNA model was designed to hold. We are not naming them here, and nothing on this page should be read as their endorsement.
Straight answers.
How do I get into the customer portal?
Sign in at app.h2structure.com with the email your invitation was sent to — the link is in the page header. Access is by invitation during the pilot and there is no self-serve signup: a workspace is opened for your company and your administrator invites the rest of your team from inside it. No invitation yet? Request a demo and we will walk through one of your own projects first.
Do I have to change my design software?
No. You export the same file you already export — from AutoCAD or any other design tool that writes DXF or DWG. Keep your layer names and your depth callouts where they are. If your export convention is loose, the export guide shows what helps — but a plain outline still works, you just enter the depths yourself.
There's an AI assistant in there. What can it actually touch?
Six things, and the list is written in code rather than decided in a conversation: open a screen, run the walkthrough, run engineering, run site intelligence, request a PE review, or hand a question to a person. Anything that changes a project is proposed first and performed only after you confirm it, and the audit log then records both that Vanessa proposed it and that you approved it.
She cannot apply a seal. That is not a setting — sealing is simply not among the things she is able to do, because it is a licensed engineer's act. She also cannot reach anything your own role could not reach directly, so she is no way around permissions.
On answers, the rule is cite or escalate: every reply carries the file page, calc line, standard or precedent it came from, and when your records cannot support an answer she says so and opens a ticket for an engineer rather than filling the gap. She never states an adequacy or safety conclusion that is not literally on a cited line. And she tells you she is an AI every time she introduces herself.
Is H2Structure an engineering firm?
No. Renovatio Intl, Inc. is not an engineering firm and H2Structure is not a substitute for one. Every set is reviewed and sealed by a licensed professional engineer of record in the governing jurisdiction, and until they seal it, what you are holding is a draft that says so on its face.
Does it replace my engineer?
No — it changes what lands on their desk. Instead of a PDF and a phone call, they get a line-numbered draft with every number traced to a code clause, a page of the soil report or one of your standards, plus stress maps and a decision record.
Reviewing a draft takes minutes. Starting from nothing takes days. Engineers we work with keep their judgement and their liability; what they lose is the data entry.
What about DWG and Revit?
DXF is what the engine parses today — ASCII, AutoCAD 2000 or newer. If you work in DWG, save a DXF copy; it takes one dialog, and we will do the conversion for you on a pilot project. Native binary DWG and Revit through Autodesk Platform Services are on the roadmap, not shipping.
We are an engineering firm — can we license it?
Yes, and that is half the business. A firm licenses H2Structure and its own professional engineers work in it and seal in it: we never hold the seal and we are not in responsible charge of anything. See what a firm gets.
The decision record is the part firms ask about first — for every element, the code minimum beside the calculation beside your own standard, with the reason. Nothing the AI proposes governs a design until one of your licensed engineers approves it.
Who owns the data?
You own your inputs and your sealed outputs, and you can export them at any time. Your standards, your unit prices and your project history stay private to your company — not shared with other builders, not used to train anything outside your workspace.
What does it cost?
Pilot pricing during the founding-customer program, set against what a structural set costs you today. We would rather quote you on your actual volume than post a number that fits nobody — ask us on the call.
Which jurisdictions does it know?
Dallas–Fort Worth and the Texas metros today, with the adopted code editions and their adoption dates on the project's jurisdiction card, plus local pool amendments. That seed data is flagged for verification and the engineer of record confirms the governing edition. Other jurisdictions on request.
Is my geotech report read accurately?
Every extracted value shows the page it came from and quotes the sentence it came from, side by side with the value. You and the engineer confirm each one before the run, and anything the report does not state is marked as not stated rather than filled in with an assumption you cannot see.
Bring a drawing and a soil report.
Forty-five minutes. Your DXF and your geotech PDF, run live on the call, on one of your own projects — not a canned demo pool.
You will see what comes out of your own drawing, where the engine agrees with what your engineer sealed last time, and where it does not. If it gets something wrong on your project, that is the useful part of the call.
- 0–5What you build, how your engineering flows today, and where it stalls.
- 5–25Your DXF and soil report in. Design read, engineering run, stress map, sheets.
- 25–40Your standards: the rules you hold above code and how they would be recorded.
- 40–45Whether a pilot makes sense, and what it would take.
Would rather just write? tsingh@renovatiointl.com
Request a demo