Hi David, I've been playing with koi ponds and biofilters, which very much resemble your design using aquablox as the water chamber underneath different sized gravel, incrementally decreasing in size on it's way to the top. My first go used sand at the top, but I finally just replaced it all with pea gravel. I love the idea of your air lift pumps and plan to try and incorporate them (just when I had mostly worked out the care and feeding of my water pumps) Oh well, something new to play with I suppose. -----The biggest reason I'm commenting is about the barley straw, there is an enzymatic reaction that produces h2o2 and kills algae, as the straw rots, I believe there is also a tendency to produce zooplankton which consumes planktonic algae which clouds the water. -----"team aquascape" or "ed the pond professor" videos might interest you, but they tend toward high tech (high price) solutions, still, it might offer some tid bits if you have some spare time.----- As far as drinking water, Permaculture would use an algae film on the walls of the container to remove nutrients from rain water making it safer to drink--a calcium block in the water will raise the ph and precipitate out heavy metals Keep having fun, bob
Topic idea: Area of plant/filter area vs. pool volume and needed flow rates. Thank you for introducing the organic pool idea to a 40-year veteran of conventional pool service!
I love your videos , you and your assistant make a great comedy team who provide lots of valuable information . { David you are the perfect straight man }
Hello there! About the leaches i came with the idea of putting 2 cichlids fish male inside the natural pool, and i can say it reduced a lot the amount of leaches i almost feel like there none anymore, incredible work , of course they produce poop but in really small amounts , i had it to try .. i guess the algae is the same as before
About the algaes, while correcting the design mistakes, why not simply removing regularly the alagaes, so it would deplete the nutrients captured in it. And it can be used as a nice mulch... ?
I effing love these videos. I’m slowly managing to convince my wife that we need a natural pool. I think I can comfortably make one approximately 4m by 10m. What percentage of this area should be the stoney, planty bit and does the depth of the swimmy bit play a part in these calculations?
Hi, just curious. If I have a natural spring (it was once used to feed the house with all it's water), can I use it to feed a natural swimming pond of your design? Or would it have too many nutrients? The idea was to have it constantly fed and create an outflow channel to the landscape below. Sort of like a pool in a stream. I would estimate that the flow would be about 2 to 5 GPM normally.
Hello David, I just visited a swimming pool that has the regeneration zone full of algae. The pond was built six months ago and is located in Italy and is above ground (approx 20cm above) and has water pumps not air lift ones. The owner of the pond told me that the problem is due to low amount of nutrients in the water. As a consequence the plants are struggling while the algae are flourishing because they are more able to adapt to this situation. So the more the algae grow the more the plants struggle and the more algae grow. He told me that the system needs to tune itself. From this very few info could you confirm the words of the owner or do you believe there is something wrong in his system? Thanks a lot
