Advantages of Crystal Lagoons over Swimming Pools in South Africa

20 February, 2017 / News

Crystal Lagoons, The World’s Top Amenity, enables the construction and maintenance of unlimited size crystal clear bodies of water, at low cost. There are 600 projects in various stages of development in 60 countries. In the heart of the Egyptian desert, at Sharm El Sheikh, for instance, a sought-after residential development with a 12-hectare man-made lagoon with a sandy beach, has turned otherwise unusable land into prime property. Plans are afoot for the first lagoon for South Africa, too.

“Current conditions suggest that shared facilities make far better sense than individual swimming pools,” comments Alastair Sinclair, Regional Director for Africa at multinational water innovation company Crystal Lagoons. “But, even conventional swimming pools serving communities can be problematic because of the amount of water and energy they use and the costs related to keeping the water clean.”

Crystal Lagoons’ technology addresses the concerns around the use of potable water and the energy needed to maintain conventional swimming pools. Ground water, salt water and even brackish water is suitable for a Crystal Lagoon, and a typical Crystal Lagoon uses 30 times less water than a standard golf course. The filtration system consumes only 2% of the energy required by conventional filtration systems. In addition, whereas a swimming pool is suitable for one activity only – swimming – a Crystal Lagoon offers a far more extensive range of family friendly things to do in water: water sports like kayaking, paddle-boarding and water-skiing are possible.

“A big positive for us in South Africa is that the water usage of a Crystal Lagoon has far less impact than a swimming pool,” Sinclair explains. “Most significant is that any type of water can be used to fill the lagoon, not only water of the quality needed for a swimming pool, which is essentially the water we need for human use. The evaporation of water from a Crystal Lagoon is insignificant because of the use of a microfilm technology that can reduce evaporation by up to 70%, which means that the lagoon does not have to topped up with water regularly as with a swimming pool. In fact in some areas, rain water alone fulfils these requirements”.

Sinclair explains that 100 times less chemicals are needed to clean and disinfect the water in a Crystal Lagoon than for a swimming pool. The crystal clear lagoons are monitored and operated from a centralised location via the internet. The Control and Monitoring Centre (CLCL) guarantees water quality 24/7.

“Instead of filtration of its entire volume of water from 1 to 6 times per day, Crystal Lagoons’ solution is to apply a combination of different ultrasonic waves to the water in the lagoon, which allows the agglomeration of contaminant particles into larger particles that are easily removed from the system,” Sinclair explains.

Sinclair is upbeat about the prospects for the adoption of this unique new water feature by the South African market. “With the appeal of the beachfront lifestyle offered by a Crystal Lagoon, we have no doubt that, once local developers and investors witness the increased prices as well as faster sales rates at developments that include a Crystal Lagoon, many more such developments will be planned.”

Crystal Lagoons is an international innovation company, founded by scientist Fernando Fischmann, which has developed a patent-protected technology that allows the construction and maintenance of unlimited-size crystal clear lagoons at very low costs.