Originally Posted by
Flying Lawyer
How do you deal with the bird feces that come into your pool every day. I just wonder, mine is close to the sea and we have to deal with this every day.
I live on a heavily wooded property in the FL panhandle. Birds are not a big problem. I do deal with squirrels/armadillos/possums/racoons and all other manner of pestilential vermin on a regular basis.
For the lawyers on this thread..all of my suggestions are provided as an individual...not in my role as a PE.
Speaking as a private citizen (not as a PE) I just try to keep a decent level of chlorine in the pool. How do I know when my chlorine level is getting low? I see frogs in the pool or I observe faint evidence of yellow algae formation on the pool walls. Frogs are pretty smart and they will find someplace else to hang out if the water has a decent level of chlorine. My metric is that what I see in the pool should be no worse than what a swimmer in a nearby natural water body will experience.
Bird feces are a well known problem... There is a heavily documented experimental wetland site near Reno that was set up with the aim of providing tertiary sewage treatment..the solids had already settled out (primary treatment) and the water had undergone biological filtration (secondary treatment) so that "tertiary" polishing was all that remained to be done.
The aim was to allow the water to infiltrate into an enhanced marsh while the biomass in the marsh did whatever cleaning needed to be done. The water exiting the marsh was found to have higher values of fecal coliform than water entering the marsh (ie water quality was degraded during treatment). The culprit turned out to be migrating birds that were attracted to the artificial wetland.
The best solution might be to make your property unattractive to birds. While vacationing on the coast, I have found the super-soaker to be an effective means of communication. Not sure how this would work if you were constantly visited by flocks of gulls.
I can expand ad infinitum but i am not sure that this is the proper forum.
BTW, my primary area of practice is soil behavior. I have done enough environmental work, however, so that I am comfortable with the advice given on this thread.