How about a huge outdoor pool? How big? Oh, let’s say 90 by 70 feet, and with the center that’s around 14 feet deep when it’s full. This giant backyard swimming pool was made using some heavy machinery belonging to neighbors of the owner, namely a back ho and a small caterpillar, as well as some manpower, on the farmstead of Jerry and Marina Lusinc.
Although in the photo you see the pool with a liner, it was originally built without a liner at all, and they used it for a while with just a clay-soil base. However, organic material and life turned their attention toward a cleaner way of doing things. Weeds!
So they put a big 30 mil poly liner down. The liner is just over an inch thick. Can you imagine the weight? It comes in a big roll, so it took 15 people to get it into place and hold the ends up on the bank while putting heavy rocks in place to hold the poly there. The rocks aren’t only useful, though, they also look good, giving it a more natural feel. They also built wood decking around parts of the pool
So what about water quality? Everyone knows that algae loves standing water. In this pool, they use a combination of chlorine and algicide. They also clean it once in a while using a suction pump and sort of ‘vacuuming’ the bottom of the pool. For chlorine, they use both powdered (sprinkled on top, which partially kills the top algae while some sinks down killing organic life deeper inside the pool) and bottled chlorine. For the bottles, they string a bunch of plastic bottles out on a line – the line is tied to two ends of the pool – and they have tiny holes in the bottles, allowing a constant slow drip to control algae.
They also use solar power aeration to keep things clean, running it around 8 to 10 times per day (appropriate for the size of the pool) for 30 minutes per time. This also circulates water, and can be hooked up to a suction which they use to collect things from the bottom to keep it cleaner.
