Last winter my family moved into a new home and we and by we, I mean mostly me were excited about the new big yard and potential for having an awesome place for the kids to play, space for parties and just a nice private yard to spend time outdoors. I spent last winter planning layout for fruit trees, grass, playground, and space for possible future animals.
I knew it would be a lot of work, but here are a couple of pictures of our yard with before/after.
By fall we put in a sprinkler system, curbing, sod, fruit trees and even a pizza oven that we saw on Pinterest as a DIY. We saved a pretty penny and learned some new skills and had a ton of fun making our space exactly what we wanted.
With the winter snow melting, here is a picture of the pit, as my son lovingly calls it. The previous owner complained of run off getting into the house so he dug this pit to handle it. (I have since this time created an alternate way to handle run off... I think.)
This hole has potential
This summer as I pondered what I could use this pit for, I mused if I could possibly have a pool in my own yard. I figured it would be A LOT of work and I obviously didn't have enough coin to pay a contractor to put one in; maybe I could put in my own redneck pool. I felt I had successfully designed and executed in putting in the most difficult part of the yard last summer, so why can't I build my own pool?
This hole needs tender loving care
As I read online and found different kinds of pools, from concrete(shotcrete) gunite, to fiberglass, to liner pools, one kind of pool stuck out to me as not only as an option to DIY, but to one that looks aesthetically pleasing as well as self maintaining and cost effective. Natural Swimming Pools. Sounds green...
For those who do not know what Natural Swimming Pools are, here is a quick explanation along with some resources I would recommend you read at the end of the post.
Natural Swimming Pools, NSP, do not use chemicals, but use natural processes found throughout nature to bring balance to a pool of water to beautify and limit the amount of algae which fights for nutrients in the water. For an NSP to be successful you need a hole in the ground, a wall to separate plants from swimming area, a way to retain the water either through a liner, concrete, fiberglass, circulation of water through the pool so the water does not go stagnant, substrate of lava rock for your trillion man army of bacteria to remove the nutrients the algae lives off of and finally specific water plants that help clean the water and compete for the remaining nutrients. On the flip side, Chlorine pools purpose is to kill everything in the pool except the swimmers.
That's my understanding of how they work though it is much more complex process with balancing water PH at 7.2/alkalinity, picking clean river rock that don't change the PH or alkalinity. We want a specific kind of bacteria that will consume all kinds of diseases like ecoli and organic materials like hair, skin cells, fish poop that will inevitably end up in your pool. The resources I list below are ones that I have read through several times as well as many other sites/books that help in the design and construction phase.
As I mentioned before, the purpose of this blog will be to document my journey of building my own swim pond. I have a lot of plans and ideas of what I want it to look like and which materials I will use for the pool wall, lava rock, surface rock, skimmers, plants, pump etc, but the real journey will begin once the ground thaws.
Let me finish with my question, why swim with nature? Have you had the experience of swimming in a clean refreshing mountain lake, river, stream or natural body of water? It is so completely different from the feeling when you climb out of a chlorine pool. Your skin and eyes burn because chlorine by design kills living things. A few years back my family went on a cruise and one of the stops was in Guatemala where we took a bike ride and followed a stream to a waterfall and pool. I will never forget how inviting and good that water felt. Barring a peeing boy upstream, that water was the cleanest/softest feeling water I have ever felt. I hope I can recreate even a small portion of that feeling with my NSP and I will be a happy man. No peeing in the pool though! There is obviously some serious potential for failure at every stage in this process, but I can already feel myself gliding into this clean clear water on a hot day, so who will stop me, but myself. I came across this quote today and This Year I'm going to be a dreamer and a doer.
The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.
Recommended Reading/watching on NSP's.
Mother Earth News has a great article- Free
http://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/natural-swimming-pool-zmaz02aszgoe.aspx
Natural Swimming Pools & Ponds by Total Habitat ~$100 USD
Natural Swimming Pools by Michael Littlewood ~$35 USD
Organic Pools DIY Manual- found online
BioNova Plant a Pool- found online
David Butler is a great resource. Check out his Youtube channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/davidpaganbutler
There are a lot of blogs and articles that copy one another so if there are others that you know of or that provide good technical descriptions on construction, please message me. Look forward to your thoughts/comments.
No comments:
Post a Comment