Natural Pools

Since the natural pool is a running pitch from me in my discussions with anyone who'll listen, i've decided to write up a quick intro to the subject and a showcase of the technology and infrastructure required to have a “Natural Pool”.

A natural pool is:

-       A self cleaning water body

-       Exponentially cheaper than a conventional pool as size increases.

-       A resoivoir of pristine water for your farm

As for me, I get excited about natural pools on “Agricultural Land” because it is technically a farm dam and not subject to all the BS of a swimming pool.

Agronomically, and so as to validate the project financially (which you cant honestly do for a conventional swimming pool), there exists a really fun opportunity to make the scale of the project massive. If you are on a farm that employs spraying water quality has a significant effect on the efficacy of your spray.

“Significant loss of efficacy of the sensitive herbicide was found in hard water (by about 50-60%), and surfactants was not able to eliminate that harmful effect.” (https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/full/10.5555/20123098801)

The same goes for watering livestock. Even the laziest agronomist or Eco-Bureaucrat will confirm water quality similarly has a huge impact of livestock performance and land use efficiency (hence fencing off dams and rivers etc).

Basically I think there is a strong case to build a pool that’s about as big as an Olympic swimming pool or a roman bath house. I have my own pool design that would enable this on a “real” farm that preserves the biological filter setup preserving 75% of the total water for farm use at any time. But back to the pools!

Here is the basic idea from the true pioneer of this idea David Pagan Butler:

The principal applies in a more conventional pool system below. Note the showcase of the filter system disconnected from the water body. this is (in theory) how you would expand the system for farm use/ high water consumption.

You can do this sort of sexy landscaping thing too, it is likely not going to be cheaper than a normal pool though. However, if you were to have lots of big rocks lying around and certain pieces of equipment you could get creative…

This style (popular in the USA) is best explored under the search parameter "rec pond".

I certainly think there could be some low hanging fruit for landscape design. However here is the most “cheap-ass” large pool. I reckon it’d be great to have a pool this big full of pristine water. It cost ~$10,000USD.