Permaculture Blog

I can just see the bottom drain.

It is far from perfect but it is far, far better than the “Pool Experts” claimed could be done. I actually had one potential client tell me a pool company told her that a pool was too deep and could not be converted to a pond. So she believed that.

Laughing and shaking my head. “Too deep”???? What motivation does the pool company have to tell someone that they are using toxic chemicals and that a pool can be done better by someone else? Laughing.

Anyway, this pool was all done without adding toxins such as algaecide. Progress will slow a little now but give me another couple of weeks.

In this picture taken a month or so ago you can barely see a foot down you can’t see the loop of the Polaris hose maybe 6″ down.

I actually want free swimming algae in the beginning. It helps convert the various supplemental toxins in the pool to nontoxic plant sugars.

But back to the first one. I told this client that she can now add fish, and she wants koi, bluegill, and Bass. Lake trout anyone? Maybe catfish.

No one is positive if there was pool conditioner used here — she had a pool company doing this for many years — but any toxic “pool conditioner” is being converted to plant roots, plant stems, plant leaves, and flowers, lots of flowers :-)

Bob
www.PuraVidaAquatic.com

Pool vacuum is working. :-) https://youtu.be/bcrpmDal28E

Self cleaning pond???? :-)

Bob
www.PuraVidaAquatic.com

And more toads. This little guy is about the size of a golf ball but look how pudgy! That’s not puffed up in fear that’s just sitting outside it’s gopher hole.

So then I was digging and all of a sudden toads were running everywhere. I gathered them up and put them in a bucket and there were _a dozen_ . Put them back near an old Gopher hole and they all piled in.

Bob

www.PuraVidaAquatic.com

Source: Minn. farmers warned not to plant Monsanto’s latest Roundup soybeans

The product in question is Roundup Ready 2 Xtend, a genetically modified soybean seed that is resisistant to a pair of herbicides called glyphosate and dicamba.

It was developed because weeds have become resistant to Roundup Ready varieties with traits that used glyphosate alone.

Excellent! I’ll bet you both herbicides are used full strength.
Doubling the amount of herbicides we are exposed to from these soybeans.

There’s an interesting little caveat about using multiple _antibiotics_.

In microbiology we teach students that without a complete understanding of how an antibiotic works that antibiotics should _never_ be combined. The reason is that there are different general categories. Antibiotics that work to simply prevent growth are called bacteriostatic. Antibiotics that kill the organism are called bacteriocidal.

Penicillin is bactericidal. Something that interferes with ribosome function is usually simply bacteriostatic. The problem occurs because in order to be bacteriocidal Penicillin requires a growing cell. The mechanism of penicillin action actually causes a growing cell to burst. If the cell is not growing it does not burst. So you can see that using penicillin and bacteriostatic antibiotic together would be ineffective. The body would tend to clear them both and once they are gone the cell would just start growing again.

In addition side effects can be dramatically worse if other antibiotics are present.

Wonder if the herbicide manufacturers have ever had a microbiology class.
:-)

So looking more into salt pools (sorry I mean e-chlorine pools) and the amount of salt added, I started wondering about how many these pool systems have been sold to people with heart conditions. People who have been told to minimize their sodium intake. Many things we come in contact with are absorbed through the skin.

Laughing.  I mean being in a swimming pool with 3500 PPM sodium certainly couldn’t increase your body’s sodium level could it. Sheesh. And people soak their feet in Epsom salt to increase their magnesium level. Sodium is even a bit smaller than magnesium.

Our bodies absorb the chemicals in our daily existence around our houses as well. If you got a housekeeper and they are using cleaning solutions that you don’t know what they are….

A little bit of ammonia and vinegar is pretty non-toxic. Bleach on the other hand. Nuff said

Bob

You can have clean, crystal clear, healthy pool water with almost no chlorine at all – with Go Chemless™. Go Chemless™ – The first practical NASA spinoff ionization system for creating the purest, clearest, healthiest pool water you will ever experience… GUARANTEED!

Source: http://gochemless.com

Wow and it uses NASA technology! Absolutely mind-bogglingly disgusting. This is a copper system. You have to add ionized copper to the system. If you don’t add the toxic copper ions it doesn’t kill the algae. How that can be described as “Chemless” is way beyond me! They argue that people have copper pipes but copper pipes aren’t ionized, in solution, and spread all over you in a thin layer in strong sunlight. Sheesh

Copper is a phototoxin it’s probably more dangerous than chlorine on a beautiful sunny cloudless day out by the pool. And it’s far more of a mutagen.

People if something kills things like algae– it’s toxic.

Ecological based systems don’t kill the algae they just out compete it.

But I ran across this Googling for information on whether LA County had banned salt pools and they have not but Santa Clarita has.

Cool.
Bob

A first-of-its-kind report card on the nation’s wetland habitats shows the western U.S. is not doing a good job at keeping these disappearing ecosystems in good condition.The report, released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency t

Source: EPA: Western wetlands in poor condition

Put a wetland in your backyard. Convert your swimming pool :-)

The global pesticide and bioscience giant Monsanto is a byword for evil for millions of campaigners and concerned citizens, writes JP Sottile. But that has never stopped it getting its way with the people that matter – politicians and regulators. And now the company is on the verge of biggest victory ever – winning clearance to spray biologically active RNA sequences on US crops.

Source: While we all fixate on glyphosate, Monsanto prepares its next GM trick: RNA pesticides

Interesting article: particularly if you know what RNAi is and does.

From jm

The pond is just unbelievably clear, Bob; I don’t EVER recall seeing it so clear. THANK YOU

So one of my clients sent me an email yesterday with the above quote. I just wanted to share my observations with you reading this. It took me 3 years to get it this clear. And I have to give them credit as a client, they didn’t try to second-guess me, prove that they were smarter than I was, and insist on putting rocks “for habitat” in :-) It would clear up for awhile but then turn green again partly because it is in a dip in their property and all the surrounding water flows into it.

So every rain it would get fertilizer and nutrients from their yard and even as far away as the street washed in and fooomp it would turn green. So I talked him into installing one of my swimming pool systems on it. It is a big pond but not quite the size of a swimming pool.

But because of all the nutrient influx I thought that my pool filters would work well. And they have. It has been through two rains already and didn’t turn green and then I got the email quoted above yesterday.

Those Fish are about 5 feet deep. In another post I talk about optical density and how I measure it. So I have concrete numbers and think that I can even get it a little better so we shall see :-). I do love a challenge :-)

Bob

www.PuraVidaAquatic.com

Most of the time when people talk about optical density they are talking about laboratory results using a spectrophotometer and glass cuvettes, and measuring the light passing through a one-centimeter lightpath. But it certainly also applies in the real world to larger systems. A month ago at this pool I could put in a swimming pool net with a yellow rim and watch it disappear within the first four inches. It was green!

But, just a reminder, if the water is not toxic to the point where algae will grow, it is likely to be far less toxic to us. Today I went “prepared” because the client had sent me a surprised email that it was clearing up! The net in the first picture is about 8 feet down.

The next picture is 4 feet down in the shallow end. You can clearly see the bottom.

The last picture is showing that the pool still looks somewhat green but it is definitely clearing up.

Every two fold difference that I can see through the water is equal to 50% of the current biomass being removed. So when the pool went from 4 to 8 inches that was the first 50% of the algae biomass removed. 16 inches another 50% of the 50% that is still remaining (or three-quarters of the original amount – 75% total) of the biomass removed. 32 inches=50%+25%+12.5% (87.5%) 64inches=94% removed in two weeks! With absolutely no toxins.

Bob

www.PuraVidaAquatic.com