Swimming pond, natural pool or pool – which suits you?

Regeneration area or filter mats – where the real difference lies

Both systems work without chlorine, and both keep the water clear through biology. The difference is the area on which this biology works – and you can see it in the garden.

The Swimming Pond works with a regeneration area

Next to the swimming area lies a planted zone with substrate, through which the water is channelled. This is where the microorganisms live that draw nutrients out of the water. This area is part of the system, not decoration: it needs its space, and that space is taken from the swimming area. In return, you get a body of water that changes its face through the year – with water lilies, dragonflies and an ice cover in winter.

The Living Pool works with biological filter mats

Here the same biology sits in a filter instead of a planted zone: the biofilm that does the cleaning settles on filter mats in the compact biological filter. A phosphate filter also removes the nutrient that algae live on from the water. The pool therefore looks like a classic pool – crisp edge, visible floor, no belt of plants – and needs no additional space in the garden. The five components in detail

Why the Schwimmteich is now called a Swimming Pond

It is the same system. “Schwimmteich” was the older German term; our partner BIOTOP now calls it a Swimming Pond. If you read “Swimming-Teich” in documents from the nineties and “Swimming Pond” today, both mean the same thing: the bathing water with a regeneration area.

And then there are the hybrids

In practice, many clients do not choose one or the other, but both at once. The most common combination: a Living Pool in the middle of a swimming pond. On the outside lies the planted zone with water lilies; on the inside you swim in a clearly defined basin with filter technology. You sit by the biotope and swim in the pool. Such systems are more complex to plan because two bodies of water and two circuits have to work together – but they resolve exactly the conflict on which the decision otherwise hinges.

If you take over an older system

With existing systems, we regularly come across sand filters – the technology of an earlier generation of equipment. It works, but it is more labour-intensive and less economical than today’s biological filters. If you buy or inherit such a system, it can usually be converted without touching the basin. We look at it on site and tell you what the system can still do and what is worth doing.