My Chlorine-Free Swimming Pool

When my husband Larry and I lived in Northern California, near San Francisco, we didn't have a pool because summers were mostly cool with from the fog coming through the Golden Gate. In fact, when we moved into the last house we lived in in California, it had an above ground pool and we took it out because the water was always freezing cold and the days were rarely warm enough to go in.

And so, when we moved here to Florida, it wasn't particularly important to us to buy a house with a pool. But we soon found out that in a hot climate, a pool is actually a necessity. Submerging your entire body in cool water is one of the best ways to survive hot weather. A cool shower isn't quite the same.

Larry and I also discovered that water exercise is the best exercise for both of us. Larry has a back injury, so the support of the water gives him more freedom of movement with a minimum of impact. And for me, it is very comfortable to walk in the water for even up to an hour even on hot days, where I wouldn't make it five minutes walking on land in the humid heat. I discovered this by taking a water aquatics class at a local women's gym, and when it closed Larry and I took a membership at our local YMCA. But in both places the water was chlorinated, a downside to the benefits of the exercise (see below for more about chlorine).

So we decided to get a pool. It took us over a year to make all the decisions (considering both health and environmental effects) and get it all installed, but it was well worth it. It's really made a difference in improving our health and comfort.

Choosing a Pool

The first decision was what type of pool to install.

There are three types of swimming pools: above-ground, fiberglass, and in-ground.

Above-ground pools have a steel frame with a vinyl plastic liner. They are the least expensive pools--around $1500 for a 15-foot round pool--and limited in size and depth. You can install them easily without much site preparation. The steel frame can be dismantled, moved, and reused at a new location, but a new vinyl liner must be purchased for each installation. Vinyl liners typically need to be replaced about every 4-5 years.

Fiberglass pools are molded all in one piece in a factory, then delivered to the site with a crane. They need either a hole dug into the ground or some kind of deck structure built to hold them. Either way, there is considerable disturbance of the surrounding garden area.

An in-ground cement pool is the most expensive pool, in the range of $25,000 for the smallest pool and much more for a large pool and spa. Though the materials are basically cement and tile, it takes several months of construction and the contractor told us he would rip up the entire backyard.

Since we live in a beautiful oak grove with established plantings, we didn't want to damage the ecosystem of our backyard, and we couldn't get a fiberglass pool in with a crane, so we decided to get an above-ground pool.

We had a concern about the vinyl liner, both from a health standpoint and environmentally, especially after seeing the film Blue Vinyl. So I started calling manufacturers of vinyl pool liners and found that they aren't all as bad as we think they are. In fact, the manufacturing plant for the vinyl liner of the pool that was our number one choice for quite a while was located right on a river and locals fished right outside the factory. Just downstream was the water supply for the local community. And the family who owned the company were long-time environmentalists who had preserved acres of local habitat. We also went and swam in pools with vinyl liners. Whatever vinyl that might have been present had no odor, I had no toxic reaction, and it sure was better than the chlorine in the public pool.

And then an amazing thing happened. Larry was reading a local classified ads newspaper and found an ad for a 15-foot above-ground pool for only $300. We had been looking at this same pool for $2000. We raced home and called the number in the ad. The woman was very apologetic. She said the previous night she had broken the pump, but if we still wanted it, we could have the pool--and all its accessories--for FREE.

Well, how could we refuse? In the end, we found that we did need to purchase a new vinyl liner because the old one couldn't be reinstalled, but otherwise, our entire pool is recycled.

No Chlorine

We had two reasons for wanting to get a pool of our own. The first was so we could have the freedom to walk in the pool whenever we wanted to, and the other was to be able to walk in a pool that didn't have chlorine.

Chlorine is a very toxic chemical that is easily absorbed through the skin. And our bodies absorb much more chlorine and other chemicals through the skin than from actually drinking the water. In my book Home Safe Home I wrote that a study done by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Quality Engineering found that 29 to 46 percent of water pollutant exposure occurs through the skin in children and 50 to 70 percent in adults. A fifty pound child can absorb up to then times more contamination from swimming in a pool for an hour than drinking a quart of water.

When we drink water, only about 20 to 50 percent of the chemicals ingested are actually taken into the body, depending on what and when you have eaten. But with skin absorption, virtually 100 percent of the contaminants go directly into the bloodstream. The skin in the genital area of the body absorbs the most chlorine, and it is almost always underwater, exposed to this pollutant.

In addition to the toxicity of the chlorine itself, chlorine in the presence of any organic compound (including leaves and other plant material, insects, and human bodies) turns into carcinogenic trihalomethanes, which include chloroform.

But a swimming pool is like a large pond, and left alone, Nature will take her course and the pool will turn into a large pond, complete with scum and frogs and fish and everything else that lives in a pond.

We chose to keep the water clear with a system developed by our friend Winston Kao at Go Beyond Organic. His approach is entirely different from most pool maintenance programs. Instead of putting toxic chemicals like chlorine or bromine in the water to kill disease-causing organisms, Winston's program restructures and oxygenates the water into a liquid that is actually beneficial to health, while at the same time being an environment in which disease-causing organisms will not survive.

This is accomplished by using a specific water conditioner and technical grade hydrogen peroxide (35%). While this hydrogen peroxide is a very dangerous oxidant at this concentration (it can burn the skin and blind the eye), when diluted in the pool, it simply adds oxygen to the water. So we handle it with extra care and keep it locked up.

The water conditioner itself is a small pipe that is attached to the plumbing so the pool water continually cycles through it. Within the pipe is a core made of precious and semi-precious metals which adds a very small charge of electricity to the water as it flows through. The minerals in the water become 400 times smaller, resulting in water that feels very soft and silky, without adding salt or other water softening chemicals.

All we do to maintain our pool is periodically add more hydrogen peroxide, when conditions in the pool indicate it is needed.

Between the water conditioner and the hydrogen peroxide, the water in our pool is clear, fresh, soft, and alive with oxygen. After walking in the pool for 45 minutes, both Larry and I feel refreshed and happy.

Heating the Pool

Ideally, we would walk in our pool all year long, but even here in sunny Florida the winter temperatures get too low to use an outdoor pool.

We like the water temperature in our pool to be 85 degrees--warm enough to not get a shock when we first get in, but cool enough to be refreshing as we walk.

Simply using the insulated solar pool cover that captures heat during the day and keeps the water warm at night brings the water almost up to our preferred temperature, but we do need a little extra heat some months of the year.

The choices are a gas heater, a heat pump, or solar heating, which is basically coils of black plastic that hold water warmed by the sun. We investigated solar and found that we had too much shade and not enough sun for the number of solar units we would need to raise the temperature of the water the amount we needed, so we ended up with a small affordable gas heater (which we bought from a solar dealer, so at least our dollars supported the solar industry).

The Pool Enclosure

We haven't yet built a pool enclosure, but we need to. Our pool is under oak trees, so there are a lot of leaves, and in the summertime we will have mosquitoes. Every house in our city has a screened enclosure in the backyard over the pool. I don't like the way they look, so it's likely we'll do something more inventive. When we do, I'll add it here.

We Love Our Pool!

We're very happy we made the choice to have our own chlorine-free pool. Being able to exercise at home, whenever we want, in chlorine-free water, beneath our beautiful oak trees is worth every hour it took to figure this out and every dollar invested.

(what we see when we float in our pool)