How not to kill your lawn with a swimming pool
3/7/2025
Translation: Eva Francis
Pictures: Philipp Rüegg
An above-ground swimming pool and a lush lawn don’t go hand in hand. Last year, my pool season ended with a foul-smelling brown patch of grass. This summer, I decided to build a pool base to prevent that from happening again.
Our above-ground pool isn’t large at all, but it causes quite some damage to our lawn. I used to change the water more regularly and move the pool every time I did. As a result, more lawn was affected, but it wasn’t as badly damaged. However, I stopped doing so, as it’s a lot of work and a waste of water – even with our relatively small 2,000-litre pool.
This year, I followed my co-workers’ advice and bought a decent filter pump and pool chemicals to keep the water clean. This means the pool can stay in the same place all summer. At the same time, I decided to build a base for the pool so it doesn’t completely ruin the lawn.
Simple, flexible and affordable
What I wanted was a permanent solution that wouldn’t damage the lawn. In other words, one that’s easy to set up and take down. I decided to go for wooden pallets. You can get them new, used or ideally for free, like I did from our next-door painting and plastering store.
Our Intex Easy pool has a diameter of 244 centimetres. The dimensions of a standard Euro-pallet are 120 × 80 centimetres. So I took eight pallets and arranged them in rows of two. This gave me a surface of 240 × 320 centimetres, which should just about fit the pool. It’s a bit narrow, but long enough to cover the entrance, too.
If your garden doesn’t look like a golf green either, make sure to arrange the pallets as evenly as possible. Our lawn’s so uneven that I didn’t bother getting out the spirit level, but worked with wood boards to cover obvious holes. How meticulous you need to be depends on the location and size of your pool.
Euro-pallets have a rough, untreated surface, so I covered them with pool mats to avoid getting splinters. The ones I used are 50 centimetres wide and one centimetre thick. Thinner ones are available, but 2,000 kilogrammes of water create quite some pressure, so I wanted to be on the safe side. The jigsaw-shaped mats are very easy to put together and arrange.
I needed 35 mats – seven in length and five in width – creating an area of 250 × 350 centimetres. This means they stick out slightly on all sides, covering the pallet edges and doubling as protection.
Carrying the pallets to our garden and building the pool base took me just about an hour. I only had to buy the pool mats – no other expenses. The result? Our swimming pool has its own little throne. And when summer’s over, it won’t take me long to take it all down again.
This won’t spare the grass from all damage, but it should protect it a lot better than when I placed the pool directly on the lawn. And if my pallet base leaves brown squares in the grass, I’ll use it as a chessboard in autumn.
Philipp Rüegg
Senior Editor
Philipp.Rueegg@digitecgalaxus.chBeing the game and gadget geek that I am, working at digitec and Galaxus makes me feel like a kid in a candy shop – but it does take its toll on my wallet. I enjoy tinkering with my PC in Tim Taylor fashion and talking about games on my podcast http://www.onemorelevel.ch. To satisfy my need for speed, I get on my full suspension mountain bike and set out to find some nice trails. My thirst for culture is quenched by deep conversations over a couple of cold ones at the mostly frustrating games of FC Winterthur.
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