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Nick

First, I have uploaded my paper on Natural Swimming Pools. These are swimming pools that do not require the use of many (or any) chemical additives to maintain healthy water and a tolerable level of clarity. I initially chose this topic because of my experience as a pool technician over the past five years, learning about and designing pools from the ground up, and then maintaining them over time. This is a taxing and expensive process, and, furthermore, I've come to consider swimming pools a bit of an eyesore, or an ostentatious symbol of wealth in many cases. Without getting to far into it....

Primary interest: General energy efficiency, basic steps to more responsible living, one time fixes with financial benefits, partial "greening" efforts made accessible and applied across the board.

Energy BLOG REVIEW:

I have reviewed the Colorado Renewable Energy Societies blog. It is a compilation of several contributor's ideas, primarily in response to political events, within the state of Colorado. AMong these figures are the president's of the following organizations: Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association, Energy Efficiency Business Coalition of Colorado, Ratepayers United Colorado, and Western Resource Advocates. The principle editor of the blog is Tom Konrad, Ph.D. is CRES Treasurer, and an Investment Advisor with AIG Financial Advisors. AIG Financial Advisors is a registered broker-dealer and SEC registered investment advisor. His driving motivation is convincing elected representatives of the economic sagacity of renewables, hence his focus on including the leaders of public policy firms. However, his own area of specialty, if he may be said to be a specialist, is in the discussion of the economics of personal, energy-friendly decision-making. For example, in 2006 he wrote to justify his purchase of a diesel jeep that he runs on biodiesel rather than buying a hybrid. He mentions that the $8,000 he saved would more effectively go towards another cause, that the payback of the $8,000 in saved fuel costs would take over 100,000 miles, and while he still has some guilt over not using a hybrid, he strongly feels that informed decisions allow one to cut some corners if he or she emphasizes other potential areas in which one might reduce his or her carbon footprint. Thus, the tone of this blog is not quite as emphatic as certain other eco-blogs, but it seems to go through lengths to convince people that they can be roughly "normal" participants in society while maintaining "green" values. It reeks of equivocation, but, as one might easily argue, so too does America, and you must fight fire with fire, however subdued. http://www.cres-energy.org/news_blog.html

Natural Swimming Pools.

Natural swimming pools serve as an alternative recreational area for those looking to avoid the artificial elements and costs associated with chemical swimming pools. As the title would suggest, Michale Littlewood, the author of Natural Swimming Pools: Inspiration for Harmony with Nature, hopes to advance the idea of non-chlorinated swimming ponds over their chlorinated counterparts.

State of the Field: Currently, the number of chlorinated, or “traditional” swimming pools vastly outnumbers natural swimming pools to the extent that even a seasoned professional in the swimming pool industry may never have come across a natural pool. These traditional pools can easily run over $2,000 in annual chemical costs, and about half of that in energy costs. If you are considering a larger swimming pool, it can easily double those costs. Additionally, chemicals such as chlorine can be harsh on motor bearings and heat exchangers, and equipment usually needs to be replaced at least every ten years. Professional maintenance is recommended several times a season, at least, and in a leisure industry rates can skyrocket. These are some of the disincentives to owning a pool that I have personally encountered, and they represent just the tip of the iceberg.

Littlewood sees the problem as something more profound than expense. He argues that a continuously artificially treated body of water encourages disharmony with nature, and that humans would do well to revert to a more natural relationship with their outdoors bathing systems. This, aside from a one-time conversion cost, would create a natural ecosystem with the convenience of being in ones own backyard at significantly less cost in time and maintenance. Swimmers would be capable of entering and exiting water without the fear of soaking up chemicals.

Presently there are over 20,000 natural swimming pools in Austria, 8,000 in Germany, and 1,500 in Switzerland (19). There are significantly fewer in France and England, but Littlewood has taken the initiative to begin construction in those two countries. America has even fewer such pools and only very recently have a few builders trained their staff in natural pool construction. He describes the difficulty in breaking through the cultural boundaries that have people convinced that such pools could not possibly be sanitary, or maintain a comfortable level of algae so as not to appear swampy.

The thrust of his argument is that aquatic ecosystems, with the assistance of a small circulation and filtration system, can perform the same tasks as traditional chemicals. Various micro-organisms and aquatic plants absorb “decomposing materials, bacteria, as well as pollutants from the water and convert them into biomass” (36). Furthermore, zoo plankton feeds on single cell algae (that which tinges the water yellow, green, or black) and sustains water clarity. Other plant life is capable of digesting E. Coli strains that terrify swimmers in untreated water. For those especially concerned about this danger, there are new test reagents available to ascertain whether there are unhealthy levels of E. Coli present.

Algae will always be present in these kinds of pools, but the key is to maintain a level that is acceptable to swimmers. This can be achieved by introducing an array of plant life that is appropriate to local climes. There is a lot of flexibility in trying to do so, as the pools are built in a two-level construction. The shallow, surrounding area (or, “Regeneration Zone”) can constantly be altered to fit these goals.

Ascetics and Cultural Values:

The idea here is to re-paint natural pools as an ascetic paradigm. It is easy to preach to the choir and to sell naturalists on the idea of a swimming pond, but there is a barrier in commercializing these pools and having an actual, broad effect on the environment. Littlewood is also a designer. He offers a variety of designs for natural pools, and considers one of the primary selling points the fact that these pools are not only self-contained recreational areas, but beautiful landscaping features as well.