Hello! I'm finalizing my plans for my natural swimming pond. The excavator will hopefully be able to dig in a couple of weeks. I need some insight as to whether my filtration design will actually work--it's based off of David Pagan Butler's systems, so especially if you're familiar with that system, I'd appreciate advice. Due to the large size of my pond (48' diameter with approx. 30k gallon capacity), other filtration systems aren't really practical or cost effective. It seems it would require a commercial sort of pump, so the DPB bubble pumps are the most realistic given the specs.
I would like a tiered/stepped design to limit the rock/pebble erosion. I've been trying to figure out how to keep my rock from eroding into the deep area when the kids are kicking around. It's been a challenge, and the best solution I've landed on is to create these steps & terraces. I'm planning an RPE liner from BLT liners.
So I've landed on a 3-tiered circular pond. Think inverted wedding cake. This will allow me to have the 1-1.5' depth on the outer ring as the bog zone (leaving about 25% of it open for a shallow swim zone and easy entry). Then a 3.5' deep shelf for my kids to play games, and the 6' zone for more jumping depth whenever I get around to building a dock.
Now, the problem I'm running into is the David Pagan Butler system is usually set up with a plunge pool where the air lift pumps can easily run vertically down to the deepest point and bring the water upwards to his bog zone around the perimeter. Given that I'm not doing a typical plunge zone and want some flatter areas, I came to this solution with the help of Perplexity...which has been a frustrating experience to say the least so I'm sure it's wrong and that's why I'm picking y'all's brains.
It suggested running air lift pipes (4" pvc) with a 45 degree elbows at the top to direct the water to the next tier. Each tier would have it's own sets of the air lift pipes.
Will this effectively move the water the way I need it to?
I hope the drawing gets the idea across, but I have about 0 visual-spatial skills, so it's the best I could do.
