Environmental awareness finally enters the pool industry. Imagine, bathing in the comfort of your backyard, in clear and untreated water, surrounded by beautiful aquatic plants. During the winter, the space is covered with ice, like a lake. Is this a dream or reality? Welcome to the world of green pools, a well-developed expertise in Europe for over 25 years and now available to us for our greater well-being!

Biological or natural pond type swimming pools are can be integrated easily in the privacy of our backyard. They offer us the pleasures of swimming in nature in respect to esthetics and the conservation of biodiversity. Since each project is customized with its own "ornamental miscegenation," there are endless possibilities to integrate the pool in one’s garden.

To maintain these wonderful pools, perfectly integrated into the natural landscape, no longer do you need more chemical molecules that eventually seep into our environment! Indeed, nature takes care of clean water from these natural spring baths using the method called "lagoons".

But What Are Lagoons?

Lagoons are a natural treatment that use the principle of aquatic vegetation as purifying agents for polluted water. In creating a living environment for aquatic fauna and flora, we recreate an ecosystem critical to the process of naturally purifying water. Aquatic plants are used in this case as support for bacterial colonies, ensuring that efficient water treatment plants slowly cross the dominant plants installed.

Although nothing can substitute for nature, the concept has everything in place to replicate the principles of living water, using oxygenation, filtration, motion and movement to avoid stagnation. The use of a pump (the skimmer) is needed to allow the flow of water, but the rest of the process is 100% natural.

Areas Close to Nature

A buffer harvest tank, with the movement of water, creates an overflow area. The water is collected and directed towards the mechanical filter and large areas of lagoons for filtration. The first cascade is used for oxygenation and the warming of the water, and moreover, also serves to oxygenate it. Beaches created adjacent to the basin are filled with lava rocks and pebbles. These beaches are home to a score of varieties of different plants (macrophytes and helophytes), with particularities and various flowers.

A natural pool thus consists generally of a main area for swimming (swimming pool) and one or more areas of plantations (river reclamation and treatment plants). For a pool that measures 15 ft x 30 ft, the swimming pool will be 50% of the total area. Over this sort of surface, the biological equilibrium is guaranteed, and the surface lagoon is less than the swimming pool.

Distributors say that the investment of money required in setting up a natural pool is more or less similar to that of traditional concrete one. Obviously, the work of landscaping the pool, with its own infinite possibilities, may add to costs of the pool.

Stuff that Goes with Natural Pools

• Swap your lawn area for a natural pool with clean boundary lines, for an esthetic reminiscent of the finest spas in the world.
• Create a natural oasis of well-being. Indulge in a swim with the sound of the overflow lapping a lush natural beach.
• Create a landscape of astonishing beauty, which encourages biodiversity and helps to conserve specific aquatic pond and shoreline ecosystems.
• Unleash your imagination by incorporating natural elements and unusual architectural soothing light within the lush aquatic plants of your choice.
• Test the difference of having a natural swimming pool in your yard. How beautiful it is to swim in a setting oh so in tune with nature!
• Do some laps in your natural pool of clear water, with all the advantages of a traditional pool.

Did You Know?

• The fragile ecosystem of ponds, lakes and aquatic shorelines is a very rich and very useful resource for the health of our lakes and rivers. However, these environments are also very vulnerable. Each day, urban development and agriculture contributes to the regression or destabilization of the fragile equilibrium of these environments.
• Chlorine is a particularly volatile element, which can thus easily leak into ambient air, and which can be linked to the onset of asthma. According to some studies, 25% of competitive swimmers suffer from asthma, a figure well above the average. Other studies indicate that the proportion of children with asthma is higher among those that swim in chlorine-treated pools.

What about Mosquitoes?

Your natural pool has its own defenses against mosquitoes. In the first place, the fact that it is a living, breathing environment leads to mosquitoes meeting their natural enemies in plants and so forth in and around your pool. Moreover, the constant movement of water in your pool deters them from laying their eggs there.

Can you Swim with Sunscreen?

Avoid it, obviously, because you might endanger the flora and fauna of your pool.