Ecological Biofilters for Pond and Pool

Company Clear Water Revival have created a biological water filter system without the need for plants and as a more ecological alternative to chlorine

So Hot The Roads Melted ... 98F Britain Bakes ... Wimbledon’s Hottest Ever Day ... That was how some headlines marked thermometers touching 37C in July.

Many will have headed straight for the nearest pool for some respite. Others, however hot it gets, steer clear of what Andrew Cox describes as the traditional chorinated pool’s “soup of chemicals”.

“No one wants to deal with chlorine. No one likes it,” he says. “You get hot, you jump in there but the fact is that you feel dirty because you are covered in chemical.”

Cox, along with his business partner David Nettleton, has been building natural swimming ponds and pools in the UK for the past eight years, using plants dotted in and around the water to naturally purify the water.

However, in their latest innovation through their company Clear Water Revival, the pair have created a biological water filter system without the need for plants. The innovators say it is a new, more ecological alternative to chlorine for people to swim in and even safe to drink.

“It feels better on your skin,” Cox says. “It leaves the swimmer feeling refreshed, as if you have been in a mountain stream or lake rather than a soup of chemicals.”

Cox and Nettleton started the company in 2006 and have built ponds and pools around the country. Such ponds and pools have grown in popularity over the past 30 years, although most are in Austria and Germany. The UK’s first manmade outdoor natural swimming pond for the public did not open until this year – in King’s Cross, London.

The ponds work by using plants and natural processes to filter the water, he says. In a typical pond, half of the area is taken up with plants which surround the water. The plants – such as hornwort and water crowfoot – thrive on the phosphorus and nitrogen from the water, and stop the growth of algae and pathogens. Cox says the process artificially creates a garden ecosystem that would probably exist in a pristine natural environment.

The pair then developed systems for natural swimming pools which do not rely as heavily on plants but on biofilters, which control the build-up of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous. With such systems the plants can be reduced to 20% of the pool area.

The company has installed more than 70 pools and ponds around the UK at prices ranging from £65,000 to £350,000. The average price came in at some £100,000.

Then five years ago, Cox says, they noticed a shift in customer attitudes, when people started to become more conscious about the health benefits of natural pools compared with chlorine pools. Spurred on, they have developed a new biofilter that they hope will overhaul the entire swimming pool industry.

The as-yet unnamed system uses a series of steps to filter the water, ultimately eliminating the need for plants altogether.

As the water comes out of the swimming pool, the micro-organisms filter the phosphorus and nitrogen out of the water, Cox says, starving any algae and bacteria of the nutrition they need to survive. Subsequent parts of the filter then work to maintain stable conditions in the water.

A patent application is being prepared and up to five pools will be installed with the new systems within two months.

The cost of their new system is twice that of chlorine filtration, although the company reckons that bill will come down over time. Where there are savings to be made is in the decreased number of times the water needs to be pumped through the filter, resulting in less electricity use, adds Cox.

Source: The Guardian

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Taxonomy

• Purification
• Technology
• Water Filtration