Swimming pond plans
As mentioned in my Where are all the swimming ponds post, we’ve been wondering why so few of the cooler or wilder new breed of campsite, offer any swimming facilities. We quite understand why they might not want to build a kidney shaped pool, but why not build a swimming pond? Turns out that my step-brother Christian Gaze had built his own, so we asked him to tell us how and why.
How to build a Swimming Pond by Christian Gaze
Swimming ponds, Natural swimming pools, Eco Pools. They are all the same thing, I prefer swimming ponds, but then I am pathologically biased against anything “Eco”. Let’s face it; anything preceded by the word ‘eco’ invariably means that it’s a load of ill thought out bollocks.
Before the pond
Anyway, I digress. The reason I was asked to write this article is not because I am cynical, but because I have “self-built” us a swimming pond. I am here to tell you that it’s dead simple and anybody could do it.
Marking Out
The first question is why build a swimming pond. As we have already established I am not very ‘beard and scandals’ and eco issues are low on my list of priorities. Shallower than that, what I really care about is the aesthetics of the thing. Ponds are beautiful, swimming pools are ugly, or at least they are for 8 months of the year. I want something that looks right in our garden all year round, regardless of whether we are swimming. I definitely don’t want some bright blue eyesore to depress me in mid winter.
Getting ready to dig
There are plenty of other reasons to opt for a swimming pond. Wildlife. The frogs and the toads and the newts and the fish and the insects are always up to something and it is usually more interesting than anything that I should be doing. Our children are often snorkelling in our pond and there’s something to see. Once you have swum in a swimming pond, swimming in a traditional pool is like swimming in a barren tank.
Pool dug
Swimming Ponds are warmer than traditional pools. Half the surface area of a swimming pond is devoted to plants and is therefore quite shallow. Just like pools on a beach the water in the shallows heats up quickly and is then circulated into the rest of the pool.
Geotextile Underlay
Chemicals. It seems to me that we have no choice but to swim in a soup of some sort. However we do have the choice between a natural soup and a chemical soup. In a swimming pond it’s a soup of all things natural; algae, frog poo and other similar delights. A traditional swimming pool might look crystal clear but in reality it’s a chemical soup. I am cheerfully ignorant about chemistry, but I have noticed how quickly frogs die in swimming pools; I have pulled out their tiny carcasses by the kilo. It occurred to me that what ain’t good for frogs, probably ain’t good for me. And have you seen how your children’s hair goes green and then turns into wire wool, and how your swimming gear falls to bits after a couple of years? I’ll take my chances with botulism.
Pond Liner
I am utterly smitten by swimming ponds, but I am prepared to admit that I might be in a minority and that some might not share my fervour for these splendid oases. So why wouldn’t somebody like them? Creepy-crawlies, for some the idea of swimming with frogs is a delight, but it can be a real turn-off.
Geotextile overlay
Others dislike how the small amount of control that you do exercise can take time to take effect. You have to leave it nature and the best you can hope for is to be able to nudge nature in the right direction. You can’t just sling in another bucket of chemicals every time something is amiss. Believe me, things will go amiss, there will be times when your pride and joy will not be crystal clear, it will be purest green. Having said that, there has yet to be a day that I haven’t just dived in anyway.
Just add water and off you go
For yet others still, it is that swimming ponds take time to establish and there is not much that you can do to hurry it along.
And then there is the health and safety brigade who like to test everything. I have always taken the view that if the fish aren’t floating belly up and the frogs are still croaking then it probably won’t do me too much harm.
Full but not yet planted
The second big question is what sort of swimming pond do you want? There is a very broad spectrum of possible swimming ponds. At one end of the spectrum there is something similar to a traditional pool that is cleaned naturally using plants and bacteria with a sophisticated pumping system. At the other end there is something not much different from an old fashioned fish pond and in between there are a myriad of choices. Think hard about your expectations before you decide on your system. Before we built our swimming pond we swam in all the local lakes and reservoirs, usually illicitly. I reasoned that all I had to do was improve just a little on what was locally available and we would be in the clover. So ours is pretty much just a pond.
After initial planting
Building it. It’s simple, do loads of research, dig a big hole, bribe your friends to help you drag in the liner one Saturday afternoon, put in the plumbing system, fill bits of it with gravel, wait for the rain to fill it up, plant it and then sit back for 3 or 4 years while it develops. I could write paragraphs and pages of ‘how to’s, but somebody else has already done it and so much better than I ever could and he’s been good enough to add loads of drawings, photos and tables. Get one of Michael Littlewood’s books, either Natural Swimming Pools or Natural Swimming Pools: A guide to Building. You can order them direct from him here. They are without doubt the best single source of information that are out there at the moment. No, I am not related to him, but I do swap emails from time to time and I wore his book out making our pond, and then had to buy a second copy.
The first summer
The pond we built is 23 meters by 14 meters and 2.8 meters deep. It cost 12,000 euros, but I did the digging myself. The benefit of hind sight would have saved us a couple of grand. It wasn’t complicated to build and required no specialist knowledge. Bear in mind that the same thing built by professional might cost 50-70,000 euros. Yes, I am sure that a professionally built pool is better, but 38,000 euros better?
I have set up an internet forum, www.swimpondcentre.com for people who want to swap ideas about self-building and maintenance, although I suspect that at least half the users are my mother. It occurred to me that if you could get a bunch of passionate amateurs to swap their observations then you could end up with a really useful resource. A professional will build a pond and then only visit it at intervals. An amateur will be there all the time, he won’t be able to leave it alone, he will notice the smallest change. I am down at our pond checking things out every day; two and three times a day if work is dull.
Swimpond today
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[...] While up in Norfolk I was speaking to a very old mate about Glamping. He’s definitely got the land for it and possibly the location. There’s even a big pond although it might need a bit of work before I’d want to swim in it, so we also talked about how to build a swimpond. [...]