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How do natural
swimming pools work?
Clear, clean water
is the naturally occurring state in ponds and lakes if the body of
water is large enough and deep enough. Natural swimming pools are purposely
built to emulate this state by using nature's purifying properties
of plants and micro-organisms to produce clear, clean and healthy
swimming water.
The water is kept
circulating slowly by differences in temperature in the shallower and
deeper zones, and also by a small pump. When water leaves the swimming
area it passes through a skimmer where any surface debris such as
leaves are removed. Then in the plant zone (also known as the
regeneration zone) the water is further cleaned through natural
processes in a number of different ways. For example in and around the
roots transformation takes place on a micro-bacterial level, whereas
the leaves of different plants take out different types of nutrients,
important to restrict the growth of algae.
This sounds like
an amazing idea. Why have I never heard about it?
The concept of
natural swimming water is relatively new in the UK, but it is very
well developed in other countries. In the last 20 years around 50,000 swimming
ponds have been built in Germany, Austria and Switzerland for private
clients, hotels, and public authorities.
Does this
natural cleaning process really do as good a job as chlorine?
Much better. The
thousands of ponds already built have been subjected to rigorous
testing and have exceeded all EU standards for both health and water
clarity. The water tested in large public swimming ponds was
reported to be drinking water quality in almost all categories.
How big is the
swimming zone and plant zone?
To ensure the
natural swimming pool is a stable ecosystem, you need a large enough plant
zone relative to the swimming area. Usually the balance between the
two is approximately half swimming area to half planting area.
Can they be heated?
Natural swimming pools can
be heated although we do not recommend it to start with - we suggest
trying it without heating for a season and you can always add it
later if you wish. Actually the
water in a natural swimming pool is anyway several degrees warmer than a
conventional pool because the planting area is shallow and
acts as a natural solar panel. Also we usually use a black
liner, which retains heat. We have found that our customers
have been happy with the water temperature without heating and their
pools are often consistently 24-25 deg C over the summer months,
with the swimming season typically running from April to late
September.
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