We are currently busy constructing a natural pool which I promise to post some articles about, however I though it might be interesting to show you what we did to solve two of our problems:

First was to find a cost effective way to hide away the very ugly precast concrete (Vibracrete) wall, the second being to try find a use for the copious amount of stones that came out of the pool excavation.

We hit on the idea of using a Gabion basket to create a dry packed stone look as the base to a wooden screen wall – because of space constraints we used a reno mattress (normally laid flat)  turned on its end. This reduced the thickness to 300mm but is only advisable if you can support it off something sound – in our case the existing wall.  The advantage of the Gabions is they are a wire basket that contain the stones, which means the stones don’t have to be as perfectly shaped as they would have been if it ws a conventional dry packed wall.

On top of the stones we installed a wooden screen constructed from Latte (basically treated alien saplings with diamter between 25 and 40mm).

Here is the wall about halfway constructed, the Vibracrete wall is visable to the left:

Gabion stone wall

Some more pics now wall is complete:

Wall Complete Side View

Wall Complete