Why is it designed as a Natural Pool?
2025 May 05 | ALL BLOG POSTS
When I purchased the house something like 40 or 50 years ago I was a member of the swimming team in school, a Pisces, a guy who came to Miami on the way back to San Francisco and decided to stay here for the water. I found it to include a LOT of scuba diving and a whole lot more, like inventing underwater camera systems.
Day one going to my new swimming pool and treating the water with chlorine, I had a small accident where the chlorine ate a hole through my pants and shoes. like pronto.
Instantly I decided no chlorine will be touching my body. So i drained the pool and then filled it up again with city water. It lasted a number of weeks and maybe into a month or two before the green algae turned the water from blue to green. Solution? Empty and Fill.
I did that for just a few months, just enough time for the city to send me a registered letter pointing out that if the water consumption hit those numbers there would be no water at all for me.
Coincidentally a friend film maker came to my office and needed help with a time lapse film of a large piece of land going from nothing but dirt to a series of gorgeous natural pools with waterfalls, all of which were chlorine-free. Wow! I was totally sold on that idea. Got the phone number of the natural pool builder and talked with him about how he did it. The entire bottom of every pool was turned into a filter. A giant filter.
On the bottom of the pool he set plastic water collecting panels, 4 ft by 8 ft, all piped together. Using a strong pump, the water was pumped out of the pool up to a waterfall. The water fell into the pool and created extra oxygen for the literally thousands of tiny fish which he added to the pool. Those fish ate the algae for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The water stayed clear as a bell for... FOREVER just about.
After 15 or 20 years our silliness of having trees over the pool created eventually, after literally decades, some muddy stuff on the bottom which clogged the filtration system. There was still a lot of clear water but we took it the natural pond apart so as to replace the filters on the bottom. They have been replaced and are on the bottom now. We got rid of most of the trees too. To avoid repeating the situation I'd suggest removal the one big tree close to the pond so as to avoid it sprinkling it's leaves into the bottom and once again clogging those new filters. Because there would be the first maintenance apart from electricity to power the pump and the light in the pool. No pool boy was ever hired. No pool company had anything to do with it.
Later on, I was a cameraman filming underwater for the BBC, 60 Minutes, Dateline (before murder became the subject) and I invented an underwater housing, what we named a BETAMARINE. This carried the best camera you could buy at the time several hundred feet underwater. When designing and developing this piece of equipment we used normal pools at a large apartment complex a short walk from my office. When we started testing underwater equipment at the house in the natural pool we could see from one end of the pool to the other like it was distilled water. The chemical chlorine pools at the apartment complex made the water murky and ugly. Those little fishes did an amazing job keeping everything clean and so did the filters hidden on the bottom. When i say tiny the fish were smaller than a dime. AND FAST! Try as you might you could never even touch a fish they were so quick and swam away to keep alive.
The only kind of pool i would ever have is a NATURAL Pool.
I can not tell you how all pool owners who visited the house wanted to do just what they had never ever heard of.
Long Life Natural Everything including ourselves.