This is a seriously cool project. Dennis and Danielle McClung took a foreclosed home in Mesa, Arizona that had an empty, dilapidated swimming pool in the back yard. Rather than restore it as a regular pool, they turned it into a combination garden greenhouse and fish pond that now provides nearly all of the food they need for their family of four.
The in-ground concrete-lined pool covers about 480 square feet. They covered the pool with a transparent cover made of heavy clear plastic stretched over a frame of PVC pipe arches. The deep end of the pool was converted into a pond for tilapia fish.
The Garden Pool also includes poultry farming, uses solar power to handle all electrical needs, and many different kinds of gardening from regular dirt gardens, to hydroponics. Water drains from the plants higher up down into the pond and helps feed the fish. Chicken manure adds nutrients to the plants, which also helps provide feed for the chickens. The results?
Initially, we had anticipated self-sufficiency by 2012 but we achieved our goal by mid-2010. Our family gets about 8 fresh eggs a day, unlimited tilapia fish, organic fruit, veggies, and herbs 365 days a year. To our knowledge, the GP (short for Garden Pool) is a one of a kind creation.
What is also remarkable is that this system requires very little maintenance. Because everything is designed to work in synch with everything else, and much of the work is done by automatic devices driven by solar power, weeding, watering, and mulching aren’t necessary.
Even if you don’t have an old swimming pool in the back yard, one has to wonder how hard it really would be to replicate at least the effects of this remarkable experiment in other suburban or urban settings? All of the components use technology that is very well-known, but combined into a very ingenious package with smart planning and design. Imagine neighborhoods where homes were built with this kind of thing planned in from the beginning?
To learn more, visit http://gardenpool.org.
