How to convert your swimming pool... Introduction

How many of us have swimming pools that we never use? All they do is sit there and suck up chemicals and electricity and generally have a burden of ownership associated with them that never really seems worth it.

We think its a far better idea to convert swimming pools into Koi ponds! This way you can really spend a lot of money!

Seriously though, a swimming pool conversion is not all that bad an idea. Depending on your expertise you can easily convert a swimming pool into a Koi pond without the considerable expense of constructing a brand new Koi pond. And the results can be quite pleasing as well.

in this regard we have a series of pictures of how a swimming pool was converted into a Koi pond. Please don't try this at home - for this particular project we used seasoned professionals and we have had great success with the project. Every part of it was meticulously planned, and budgeted for.

Despite world class planning, the project still went over budget on ... piping and fittings! It is insane how many fittings a relatively simple project will consume, and on a big project like this the high pressure fittings that we continually insist that you should be using, work out to be a substantial cost. But as we have said, cheap fittings will cost you even more.

Happy Koi did the filtration system design, and even if we say so ourselves the system is capable of dealing with extremely heavy loads with some headroom for future expansion thrown into the equation.

The swimming pool started off being an estimated 75 to 80 000 litres. Final volume when filled is 72 000 litres and the 8 000 litres odd that was lost was due to the bottom drain installation which you will see shortly. The filter systems are approximately 8 000 litres in capacity, which we hope illustrates that the old rule of thumb of one third of your pond size should be the size of your filter systems is in fact, nonsense. Nice to have of course, but not essential when using appropriate equipment. 

Filter systems today have believe it or not advanced! You need to be aware of this and whilst we grant you that the technology is not as cheap as say crushed stone, it does however work with less space, and with substantial benefits of low maintenance and zero dead spots.

And so we begin, as with all good stories, right at the beginning. This is a picture based narrative with comments below as to what you are seeing in the picture.

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A typical common or garden swimming pool... This one is about 100 000 litres in capacity with a shallow end of about 1 metre and a deep end of about 2.8 metres or so.

 

front shot of swimming pool showing backyard fence with problem trees and shrubs

front shot of swimming pool showing backyard fence with problem trees and shrubs

 

empty swimming pool showing deep end clearly and potential problem step
empty swimming pool showing deep end clearly and potential problem step

 

This is a shot of the pool from the house - there is a garden boundary wall with shrubs, trees and bushes running behind it. The large green shrub at the back left was mandated to be spared from the axe. The second picture shows the empty swimming pool and we can clearly see the deep end. The step in the foreground left is about 250mm or so below surface and represents a potential problem area in that debris may build up on it over time.

 

pool with sides exposed dug up soil
pool with sides exposed dug up soil

 

Here we can see the sides of the pool being exposed to facilitate running return pipes from the filtration plant back to the pond. Penetrating the shell is the only way of getting the return pipes where we wanted them and hence there is no option but to dig!

 

swimming pool showing smaller koi ponds and filter plant

swimming pool showing smaller koi ponds and filter plant

 

picpicture of filter plant and two smaller koi ponds side by sideture of filter plant and two smaller koi ponds side by side

picture of filter plant and two smaller koi ponds side by sideture of filter plant and two smaller koi ponds side by side

 

The filtration plant can be seen behind the pond to the left. There is also a complication to the picture in that at the same time the swimming pool was being converted two smaller 14000 litre Koi holding ponds being constructed side by side which you can see sticking out on the right had side of the green bush. The filter plant is to the left of the green bush...  In the second picture you can see on the right hand side of the picture three separate sections being constructed - these being the two Koi ponds and the filter plant. Moving to the left you can see the low walls of the pump house starting to be constructed.

 

pump room and filter chambers being constructed
pump room and filter chambers being constructed

 

picture from pump room showing the two independant holding ponds
picture from pump room showing the two independant holding ponds

 

The first picture shows us neatly the filter chamber - the four pipes with the end caps on are the pipe coming from the bottom drains installed in the swimming pool. You can also see the pump room to the right of this being constructed. The second picture is taken from the pump room with the filter chambers on the left hand side not visible. The two independent holding ponds are now more or less complete. Each has an integrated settlement chamber running down the side of the pond.

A typical common or garden swimming pool... This one is about 100 000 litres in capacity with a shallow end of about 1 metre and a deep end of about 2.8 metres or so.