Build a Natural Swimming Pool

10 Mar Build a Natural Swimming Pool

How to Build a Natural Swimming Pool

From Mother Earth News

Douglas Buege and Vicky Uhland explain how to build a natural swimming pool on your homestead, includes information on pool zoning, natural filtration, sealing the pool and algae control.

One of the most interesting developments in the swimming pool industry over the last two decades has been the development of the natural swimming pool.  Sometimes referred to as a swimming pond, these bodies of water utilize natural materials and no chemicals for filtration.  For some, this natural experience harkens back to their youth, swimming in the lake or pond.  For others, the experience of swimming with fish and natural plans along with the associated bio film is too foreign to handle.  Either way, this post from Mother Earth News is an interesting treatise on how to build one of these fascinating projects.

Here is an excerpt from the post:

Learn how to build a natural swimming pool in order to create a cooling summer retreat for your homestead.

Whether you like to practice your dolphin dives or lounge away the day on a raft, swimming is one of summer’s perfect pleasures. With a minimum of materials and without an arsenal of chemicals, you can build an idyllic water oasis right in your own back yard and thwart summertime’s sultry dog days.

Though fairly common in Europe, natural swimming pools (like the one pictured above in an Austrian family’s backyard), are in their infancy in the United States. Ask most American swimming-pool contractors to build a backyard pool and chances are they’ll roll out a long list of goods, including rebar, gunite, fiberglass, chlorine and an energy-sapping filtration system. But in recent years, a few builders and a growing number of homeowners have learned how to build pools without relying on a mass of manufactured materials and chemical additives. They’ve found it’s possible to construct pools that are more about building with nature and blending into the natural landscape. Natural swimming pools use gravel stone and clay in place of concrete or fiberglass, and aquatic plants instead of harmful chemicals and complicated mechanical filtering systems. The plants enrich the pool with oxygen, support beneficial bacteria that consume debris and potentially harmful organisms, and give habitat to frogs, dragonflies and other water life. The result is a beautiful, ecologically diverse system that is relatively inexpensive to construct. (A natural pool can he constructed for as little as $2,000 if you do it yourself, while conventional pools can cost tens of thousands of dollars.) Natural swimming pools require no harmful chemicals, are fairly low-tech, and once established call for only a modicum of management. You won’t have to drain the pool each autumn. Except for topping it off now and then, you’ll fill the pool only once.

Dig It: Creating a Natural Swimming Pool by Hand

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