As a company that is centered around water conservation, we regularly see articles about the most recent drought issues in the state of California. This situation has become quite serious as it’s regularly talked about in the news. National Geographic recently put out an article about 5 Drastic Ways California is Tackling Drought. Although we are not downplaying the importance of this information as it all helps we continue to ask the question why isn’t anyone focusing on the large body of water in homeowner’s backyards? Several months ago there was mention of not being able to drain swimming pools in certain cities but for some reason, it hasn’t caught on enough!
It’s a fact that the single largest water conservation act a homeowner can do is not drain their swimming pool. The bottom line is the average size swimming pool in California is 20,000 gallons. Recent statistics have shown that there are 43,123 swimming pools in Los Angeles. It’s recommended to drain your pool every 2-3 years so if we take the conservative approach on this with 3 years….. you would take 14,374 swimming pools each year and multiply it by 20,000 gallons. That number is pretty high and that’s just the Los Angeles area. So with that said… are pool covers, checking for leaks, and not running your water features good for water conservation? The simple answer is YES! Why not take this one step further and think about alternatives to draining a swimming pool? Why not think about recycling your swimming pool instead?
In the southwest, our fill water is extremely hard and loaded with calcium and other hardness minerals. Over time calcium levels rise in swimming pools causing the number of total dissolved solids to rise which in turn is a key number to determine when you should change out your swimming pool water. You can regularly walk into a swimming pool store and hear them say, “it’s time to drain your swimming pool.” This is exactly what we are trying to prevent and we believe that as our number of gallons that we have conserved rises (currently over 11 million gallons) this type of service might just become commonplace. About 5 years ago we designed a mobile filtration system that recycles swimming pool water and removes the hardness in the water. This is the perfect alternative to draining a pool and most importantly conserving as much water as we can. We can only hope that as this service becomes more of a commonplace it might just catch on enough to make national news on a great way to help water conservation in an area that is in desperate need of it.