Conor Posted January 18, 2021 Share Posted January 18, 2021 I want a swimming pool but there is absolutely no budget for it. Also want a pond. May as well combine the two. Anybody ever done a pond for swimming in? I.e. a deep pool with a filter bed and shallow area with plants to maintain clear water? Not been able to find a whole load on line. We will have major landscaping, drainage and retention wall works happening later in the year so it's now or never. https://www.impressiveinteriordesign.com/diy-natural-swimming-pool/ Being in Northern Ireland, we'd probably need some sort of heating to take the chill off.... UFH loop in the base???! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jilly Posted January 18, 2021 Share Posted January 18, 2021 Love this idea, not sure how practical it is. Hygiene would worry me, you can't use any of the usual chemicals. Go to the vets to get a Leptospira vaccine against Weill's disease...?! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted January 18, 2021 Share Posted January 18, 2021 The public swimming pool seems infinitely more inviting. Or the sea but only in high summer up here. The local river has a deep pool suitable for swimming, by boy that is cold, only for the very hardy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted January 18, 2021 Share Posted January 18, 2021 2 minutes ago, ProDave said: Or the sea but only in high summer up here My eyesight is often hurt by people swimming in the harbour where I have my coffee. If only the older ones would wear the wetsuits, makes me think of the moon. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ronan 1 Posted January 18, 2021 Share Posted January 18, 2021 (edited) 1 hour ago, Conor said: I want a swimming pool but there is absolutely no budget for it. Also want a pond. May as well combine the two. Anybody ever done a pond for swimming in? I.e. a deep pool with a filter bed and shallow area with plants to maintain clear water? Not been able to find a whole load on line. We will have major landscaping, drainage and retention wall works happening later in the year so it's now or never. https://www.impressiveinteriordesign.com/diy-natural-swimming-pool/ Being in Northern Ireland, we'd probably need some sort of heating to take the chill off.... UFH loop in the base???! Maybe try settlement pond designs, we would use these alot on large scale civil projects where we need to discharge large volumes of water into a drainage system or water course. Could be fairly easily adaptable to a swimming type area and if you had any running water you could diver it through with the reed bed at the start of it leaving the pond area clean and fresh... As for the heating side of it I'm in the same area as you and I would fancy the electric bills to make that comfortable in winter...? Edited January 18, 2021 by Ronan 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iceverge Posted January 18, 2021 Share Posted January 18, 2021 A membrane lined slurry lagoon is what you're after. Then a few hundred Chinese solar tubes, Then sit back and wait for your goldfish to grow to the size of sharks in the tepid water and eat your children. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conor Posted January 19, 2021 Author Share Posted January 19, 2021 (edited) Well, I've ordered a book on natural pool design and I've started to wear down the project funder... I'd say we'll put off the major landscaping until next year. Plenty of time to get a design (and permission) figured out. @Iceverge not a million miles away from some of the design concepts out there. You put a flat base in, build up walls to form the deep swimming area, fill the outside between the edges and the walls with gravel and clay to form the shallow living area. Edited January 19, 2021 by Conor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ferdinand Posted January 19, 2021 Share Posted January 19, 2021 These have been very popular for a few years now. Half of it is dedicated to cleaning plants, and the rest for swimming, with some sort of divider. I always fancied the idea of having one with water running through it at less than the unlicensed limit of 20 cubic m per day, next to a local river. But that would be different. My dream would be a sandy bottom over a liner on the swimming half. Budgets for a built-for-you one are substantially more than an outdoor swimming pool. Get a HaHa with a liner. F Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted January 19, 2021 Share Posted January 19, 2021 15 minutes ago, Ferdinand said: My dream would be a sandy bottom over a liner Sounds a bit kinky. My dream would be an outdoor pool at 35⁰C. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe90 Posted January 19, 2021 Share Posted January 19, 2021 2 hours ago, SteamyTea said: My dream would be an outdoor pool at 35⁰C. Iceland ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted January 19, 2021 Share Posted January 19, 2021 40 minutes ago, joe90 said: Iceland I think in the last 40 years Ragnheiður Steindórsdóttir has lost her attraction for me. and I suspect she would say the same about me. But you can get a bag of donner kebab meat for 2 quid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliG Posted January 20, 2021 Share Posted January 20, 2021 On 18/01/2021 at 12:06, Conor said: Anybody ever done a pond for swimming in? Yes it can be done, but - Before you start work on this I would recommend trying swimming in something similar to see if you like it. As ever if you use something a lot then go for it, if you don't then it is a waste of money. Our pool is at 29C and my wife still feels it is cold and it puts her off going in it. Although after a minute or two you adjust to the temperature and quickly you actually get quite warm if you are exerting yourself. Heating an outdoor pool is extremely expensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conor Posted January 21, 2021 Author Share Posted January 21, 2021 13 hours ago, AliG said: Yes it can be done, but - Before you start work on this I would recommend trying swimming in something similar to see if you like it. As ever if you use something a lot then go for it, if you don't then it is a waste of money. Our pool is at 29C and my wife still feels it is cold and it puts her off going in it. Although after a minute or two you adjust to the temperature and quickly you actually get quite warm if you are exerting yourself. Heating an outdoor pool is extremely expensive. We would both swim in the sea and I'm a (retired) surfer so used to swimming in water 12-15c... 17c at the very best! I'd be happy with 20-22c for quick dips from june-sept. That's just above average air temp so I'm hoping to achieve that with a combination of insulation and a bit of passive solar heating / heat exchange with the house. We're talking 30min swims at the most. I've just bought a book on the subject and I'll carefully consider everything over the next year. Definitely a post build project. I think we'll just level the site and forgo landscaping until next year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bonner Posted January 21, 2021 Share Posted January 21, 2021 I have looked at this before and still thinking about making one eventually. In this country you have to think of it as a pond which you can occasionally take a dip in high summer. If you try to heat it without loads of chemicals the water will turn green with algae, some types of which are harmful to health. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onoff Posted January 21, 2021 Share Posted January 21, 2021 There have been a couple of good articles in The Times over the last few years ref this. Google "swimming ponds the times". You'll need a Times subscription to view the full articles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ferdinand Posted January 21, 2021 Share Posted January 21, 2021 24 minutes ago, Conor said: We would both swim in the sea and I'm a (retired) surfer so used to swimming in water 12-15c... 17c at the very best! I'd be happy with 20-22c for quick dips from june-sept. That's just above average air temp so I'm hoping to achieve that with a combination of insulation and a bit of passive solar heating / heat exchange with the house. We're talking 30min swims at the most. I've just bought a book on the subject and I'll carefully consider everything over the next year. Definitely a post build project. I think we'll just level the site and forgo landscaping until next year. Are you sure insulation in the ground will keep it warm? Worth a heat modell? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ferdinand Posted January 21, 2021 Share Posted January 21, 2021 5 minutes ago, Onoff said: There have been a couple of good articles in The Times over the last few years ref this. Google "swimming ponds the times". You'll need a Times subscription to view the full articles. In the Hi Tech Telegraph you just switch Javascript off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted January 21, 2021 Share Posted January 21, 2021 If you want to know how not to heat your swimming pool, come down here. https://jubileepool.co.uk/pool-info/geothermal/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conor Posted January 21, 2021 Author Share Posted January 21, 2021 (edited) 58 minutes ago, Ferdinand said: Are you sure insulation in the ground will keep it warm? Worth a heat modell? Deffo need to do some calcs. Ground temp is lower than air temp for almost all of the summer, so most heat that is embedded in the water will transfer to the ground, rather than radiate to the air. I'm hoping I can make use of the house's ASHP and UFH system to do some sort of heating when there's enough electricity from the PV to make it free/cheap. I'd also like to explore simply circulating the UFH through the house and to the pool when the floor slab temperature is >22c, so effectively using the pond to cool the house and house to warm the pond. No idea of how to set that up or flow rates. The pond will have at least 100m³ of water in it, a massive heat battery! I'll need a spreadsheet.... Edited January 21, 2021 by Conor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliG Posted January 21, 2021 Share Posted January 21, 2021 1 hour ago, Conor said: We would both swim in the sea and I'm a (retired) surfer so used to swimming in water 12-15c... 17c at the very best! I'd be happy with 20-22c for quick dips from june-sept. That's just above average air temp so I'm hoping to achieve that with a combination of insulation and a bit of passive solar heating / heat exchange with the house. We're talking 30min swims at the most. For those types of temperatures I suspect a solar cover could get you there, but it is not so easy to implement when there are plants around. You aren't looking for much above air temperature, so my comments below are less relevant. But 100,000 litres of water would require 116kWh of energy to increase the temperature by just 1C. I spent a lot of time looking into pool heating and costs as I didn't want it to be a money pit. Most of the discussions I could find was based on outdoor pools. Around 1/3 of the cost of heating a pool is that warm water evaporates from the top and then has to be replaced with cool tap water/rain. Ours has an automatic PVC cover and then the moisture in the air is dehumidified with the heat generated put back into the pool. Combined these pretty much eliminate that cost of heating, at the expensive of a few hundred pounds a year to run the dehumidifier. If you have heavy rain into your pool you will need to regain a lot of heat. Once this had been eliminated, I treated the pool as it if was just another room of the volume of the pool plus the room above it and used the insulation values for the floor, around the pool, the walls and the windows. This has come out almost exactly at the heat required to heat the pool. The problem when you are outside of course is the only insulation is below ground, thus heating costs would go up exponentially. Our pool has 150mm of EPS below it and 50mm all around the sides, if I remember correctly, but most of the heat loss is the room heat loss not the floor. I think the best analogy might be trying to heat a conservatory. No problem in the sun, a nightmare when it is dark and cold outside. My guess is it would lose 1-2C a day so you are talking 150ish kWh a day in the June-September period. Using it in this period the costs wouldn't be bad, all year round would be astronomical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ferdinand Posted January 21, 2021 Share Posted January 21, 2021 Another word for solar cover = "greenhouse". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conor Posted January 21, 2021 Author Share Posted January 21, 2021 My OH that is slowly coming around to the idea sent me a link to somebody that basically built a glass house over a pond and converted it in to a pool. She's a much keener swimmer than me... Things could escalate from just a simple semi-clean pond! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted January 21, 2021 Share Posted January 21, 2021 Don't forget to add in evaporation losses to your calculations. Re the flow rates for cooling, work on the ones you already have. Then see how much power is delivered. Corby Council used a large pond to collect and store energy for their community swimming pool. The system never worked right and they changed to gas heating and conventional airconditioning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliG Posted January 21, 2021 Share Posted January 21, 2021 If you have a lot of tress around I think it would get horribly clogged up with leaves. Some kind of enclosure I think would be better. Expect them to be stupidly expensive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trevorh Posted July 15, 2023 Share Posted July 15, 2023 Just throwing this curveball in here as its my long term plan.... build the pond for cold water swims in the very hot April - June that we have been having lately and longer if you, like us enjoy cold water or just use wetsuits. This book has been my best resource and I am following this rather than the American style wetland/bog filter. https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Build-Natural-Swimming-Pool/dp/099338921X/ref=asc_df_099338921X/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=311004728578&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=939069715235217875&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9045185&hvtargid=pla-465979337160&psc=1&th=1&psc=1 This pond will be half for swimming and half for aesthetics. then, at some point I intend to pick up a used endless pool pump unit and build it into our future garage... https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/600847941920520/?ref=search&referral_code=null&referral_story_type=post&tracking=browse_serp%3A7ef8c1b2-3a90-4c7d-a18f-b76344a9546a I will heat the endless pool indoors with P.V and a heat pump... this might be an easier way for you to use the water as a heat sink in combo with your underfloor heating. heating an outdoor natural swimming pond in this climate will be very hungry for power and if you do manage it the rise in temperature will mean the sytem needs to be at full throttle to cope with the algae. I noticed from our first lockdown redneck paddling pool project (dug a hole in a mountain of topsoil I have, lined it with silage cover and filled it!) that a black cover with plenty of shallow water is surprisingly warm compared to sea, river,lake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now