Build Your Own Backyard Swimming Hole

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For centuries, the temples of China and Japan have incorporated ponds to enhance the spiritual experience of worshippers. Their designers created distilled versions of nature at its best, a small taste of paradise on earth. Today, the tradition of using ponds to create oases of peace continues in coral backyards.

Ye 0lde Swimming Hole

Most people don't set out to build a pond simply to raise real estate value or improve the view. The majority of people I work with want, fast of all, a place for swimming. What makes a swimming pond superior to a swimming pool? For starters, it's likely to be bigger. Few swimming ponds are smaller than fifty feet in length or diameter because of depth and slope requirements. Ponds should be at least eight feet deep, with slopes no steeper than 2:1, and those requirements can't be met in small structures. In fact, flatter slopes are preferable for swimming access, which suggests even larger ponds.

Swimming ponds are usually deeper than swimming pools, which can mean safer diving and more room for underwater exploration with or without a scuba tank. Greater depth and volume also help stabilize temperatures, preventing the water from heating up unpleasantly, which is often a problem in swimming pools.

Tim's new book, entitled Earth Ponds The Pond Owner's Manual and Resource Guide (call 1-800-888-9098 and ask for book ME B261), as well as his other guides to pond building are available through Mother's Bookshelf.

But there's more to swimming ponds than size. The surrounding landscape and fresh, unchlorinated water give pond swimming a feeling more like an adventure than a bath. Swimming morning laps around my pond, sometimes in a mist hanging over the water, sometimes streaked by the sunrise, I feel about as close to paradise as I expect to get this side of heaven. Some of it has to do with the quiet: no humming filtration systems or vacuum cleaners. The rest has to do with the water. Swimming in a natural pond fed by a mix of surface runoff and spring water is like taking a bath in a mineral spring. The water is more than invigorating, it's therapeutic. We're talking about the difference between immersion in living water and dead water.

Pond Siting and Construction

How does a land owner create a swimming hole overflowing with living water? Building a swimming hole demands the same soil and water requirements of any average embankment or excavated pond, only more so. A pond for raising fish can be turbid or full of aquatic vegetation, as long as the fish remain healthy; a pond for crop irrigation may drop several feet with every application. But the best swimming hole is one that stays topped off most of the time and that is free of weeds and algae. Pond owners call it exchange: the steady inflow and overflow which keeps the water fresh, oxygenated, cool, and unstratified. The more fresh water circulating through a pond, the more efficient the biological decomposition of organic waste material and the less the opportunity for algae and unwanted vegetation to arise. That's why I like to design swimming ponds a little small for their watersheds. For example, if a 15 acre watershed will fill a one-acre pond, the same 15 acres will keep a half acre pond overflowing at a greater rate. in other words, better to slightly undersize a pond than oversize it. Keep in mind that pond outlet pipes and/or spillways must he carefully designed to carry runoff during flood conditions.

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