SWIMMING POOL I FEATURE
Landscape company experiments with natural ‘swimming pond’
Ayr company dives into natural-pool trend.
IT COULD BE your dream swimming spot, with clean, natural water that’s chlorinefree: an aquatic hideaway. And it could be just steps from your back door.
The natural swimming pool – trending in Europe where it’s known as a “swimming pond” – is making inroads among North American householders who want to make a bold backyard statement that is a little bit retro and a little bit cutting edge.
Thanks to a better understanding of microbiology, and by using natural materials, an eco-friendly pool is now an option.
Derek Lippert, owner of the Ayr-based landscape firm Quiet Nature Ltd., has installed what he believes is the first such natural swimming pool in our area, both as a showpiece for clients and as his own family “swimming hole” at his Ayr home.
“I first read about these three of four years ago,” he says, “and I was hooked. There’s a wide range for creativity and >>
>> design, and I like the rustic natural materials. I got addicted to the look.”
Lippert’s 15-year-old company had been building backyard ponds for fish or as decorations: the natural swimming pool was both an extension of that experience and, with its eco-friendly credentials, a logical part of the Quiet Nature credo of sustainable landscapes and beautiful spaces.
Lippert, an ecosystem management technologist and self-taught landscaper, says, “There’s fun in creating with rocks and water and wood.”
A balance of Mother Nature, technical finesse and design smarts goes into creating a natural pool.
First, there are several components to the system. The pool can be either a shallow sitting area – Lippert likens it to a sunken flagstone patio with perimeter seating – or a deep pool much like the standard in-ground swimming pool. Lippert’s showcase pool includes both. The main pool area includes a surface skimmer to remove floating debris and a pump that sends the pool water to the regeneration area, which in Lippert’s pool, is “upstream” of the main pool area.
The regeneration area is the key component. Under three layers of gravel, metres of plastic piping deliver the used pool water to colonies of beneficial bacteria that have been encouraged to establish themselves on the gravel. These microbes are “the real workhorses of the system,” says Lippert.
In a conventional swimming pool, chlorine is added to eliminate the nitrites, which otherwise combine with oxygen to support algae growth. With a natural pool, the bacteria in the regeneration area pull the nitrites from the incoming pool water and convert them to nitrates, which provide food for the natural plantings nearby.
Any phosphates in the water are also “eaten” by the plantings, and the cleaned water then flows back to the pools.
The water of the natural swimming pool is thus refreshed just as the waters of your favourite lake are: by microbes and vegetation.
The challenge is creating the right balance of bacterial colonies in the regeneration area to handle the volume of water drawn through it. Depending on how many people use the pool, and how often – known as the pool “load” – the water may need to be regenerated from once every two days to four times a day. Compare this to a conventional pool, where the water may have to be changed up to six times a day.
Finding the right formula to handle the pool load can be a challenge, and Lippert was faced with buying a licence from European sources for the proprietary information about the recipe of micro-
There’s a wide range for creativity and design, and I like the rustic natural materials. I got addicted to the look.
Derek Lippert
organisms. This would have added to the overall cost. So he decided he would puzzle out the recipe himself. He spent three years reading everything he could, and a full year designing his first system, installed in 2013. “I researched it enough to feel confident that I could make it work.”
The resultant regeneration recipe is installed at the “headwaters” of Lippert’s showcase pool, which is a sophisticated interpretation of the “good ole swimming hole.” Off in the background is the regeneration area, which is surrounded with native and non-native plantings that are fed by the nitrates, including blue-flowering Pontederia cordata (or pickerelweed), blue-flag iris, water lilies, aquatic sedges and the sharpangled Saggitaria latifolia (arrowheads). Additional plantings outside the “regen area” can include hostas, ferns and variegated grasses. The refreshed water tumbles down into the dunk pool, or bar pool, where pink granite pea gravel fills the spaces between the limestone paving stones that form the pool bottom. Rocks provide the underwater seating for the two- to three-foot-deep (0.6to 0.9-metre ) pool.
If the elevation is available, clients may choose to have a waterfall of regenerated water to sit under, or jets can be installed for the full spa treatment.
Lippert’s showcase pool includes two nearby dry-land seating areas. Off the house is a tamarack deck with teak and wicker furnishings that drops down to a second seating area at water level.
From there, a three-part boardwalk, set on posts just above the water, acts as a divider between the two swim pools, and links the deck to a rustic, elevated area overlooking both pools. Here, grey and white boulders the size of pumpkins enclose a smoky fire that is ringed by pine stumps and two red rocking chairs. >>
>> For some clients, the dunk pool may be enough.
At Lippert’s showcase, guests can swim out of the dunk pool, under the boardwalk and into the deeper pool, which varies in depth from three to six feet, for water play or laps.
The main pool is unlike any backyard pool you know. No bright blue bottom and shining, slippery tiles around the pool edge. No chrome, no dolphin silhouettes made of white tiles.
Instead, boulders the size of kitchen stoves punctuate the pool perimeter, with water lilies floating in the shallows. Heavy wooden beams outline the deeper area, where crystalline emerald water beckons.
Recessed underwater lighting allows any pool party to continue well after dark.
Lippert says the result “feels like you’re at a lodge or a cabin. Look at how many people flock up north to get this.”
What users of a natural swimming pool also get is natural water. No need for buckets of chlorine to be stored and poured.
The 38-year-old Lippert hates the dry skin and burning eyes endemic with chlorinated pools, and possible links between chlorinated pools and the rising rates of childhood asthma concerns him, as he became father to a little boy last summer.
While the conventional pool must be drained annually, with its chlorine-laced water filling storm sewers and ultimately, our watercourses, water in a natural pool can stand in place and freeze, and even become a small skating pond.
Is a natural swimming pool the right fit for you? Well, a prospective pool owner would need about 30 per cent to 50 per cent more space than the size of the pool.
The price is comparable to a higher end, custom in-ground pool: ranging from $40,000 to $70,000 depending on what features the client wants. The natural pool is not maintenance-free. Once the water is warm in the spring, new bacterial colonies need to be introduced into the regeneration area. (Lippert’s microbial recipe can be purchased at pond supply stores, such as Aquascapes Inc. in Brampton, Fish Farm Supply in Elmira or Silvercreek Aquaculture in Erin.)
Last year’s annual plantings, or any perennials lost to winter kill, have to be replaced. The variable speed pump that circulates the water may need servicing, just as any pool pump would. The skimmer filter will need to be occasionally cleaned. And just as with a conventional pool, floating leaves and debris will need to be removed.
Pool protocols are the same as for conventional pools: shower before entering the pool (lotions, dirt and sweat add to the load on the regeneration system), no dogs, no waterfowl. Lippert advises against adding fish. They may be pretty, but “they add more nutrients (waste) than the value they add.”
The difference is the feel of swimming in natural, unchlorinated water: no stingy eyes or irritated skin.
Lippert also notes that the natural
swimming pool can become an oasis of biodiversity in the urban setting. And here, there is a proviso for potential natural pool owners: if you don’t like the Great Outdoors, this isn’t the pool for you.
The pool-edge plantings attract insects, and their larvae attract frogs, water striders and dragonflies. “The larvae will grow, and beneficial insects and frogs will prey on them,” says Lippert. “Just like the lake at the cottage, there are all kinds of insects in there that you don’t even notice.”
He adds that, just like at the lake, water creatures tend to stay away from human swimmers, but he says that youthful “biologists” will also enjoy the natural swimming pool. He invited his neighbours and their children to the pool once it was operating last summer. “They swam, but then they were jumping from rock to rock and exploring the edges. I think this has a real educational aspect.” How will you know if this is a smart decision for you? Lippert invites prospective buyers “who want the full package” to test the system. “I tell my clients to bring a cooler and the kids and see if it’s right for them.” Simply put: dive in.