A +Pool in the East River | Hacker News Reader

A +Pool in the East River

newyorker.com

58 pointssschwartz37 comments

Off-topic, but why do traditional print companies always stubbornly insist on ignoring the fundamental differences between print and web media?

All that text, and not a single link to the +Pool Kickstarter page. It doesn't even have to be in the article text itself, having it at the end would be just fine.

Agreed

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-a-floati...

That was the first Kickstarter. The most recent one (and the one described in the story regarding $300k raised, etc.), is here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-tile-by-...

It looks like the first Kickstarter was to find and test an adequate filtration system, and the second is to build a "float lab" test pool. If that succeeds they'll probably have to launch yet another Kickstarter asking for funding of over a million to build the final product.

The article says they raised $300k, but this kickstarter only says $50k. Any ideas where the discrepancy comes from?

That was the first kickstarter; they then ran a second one for the next phase of the project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-tile-by-...

The Kickstarter ended in 2011, and their web site at http://www.pluspool.org/ has options to buy tiles. It looks like they've pursued other fundraising options after Kickstarter.

Because if you click out to another web site, they might lose your eyeballs, and you would not be looking at the print media company's adverts any more.

I asked the author on twitter, maybe he'll answer. :)

https://twitter.com/mithaldu/status/494940364717842434

Turns out it's simply a direct copy of a print article, which of course doesn't have links.

Not referencing sources is bad even for classic non-hypertextual media.

Is it just me, or is this a completely stupid idea?

So you take a big pool and stick it in the middle of a dirty river. You need it to be full of water, so you filter a bunch of river water and fill it up. Then, for no good reason I can discern, you take that nicely filtered water and dump it right back into the river so that you can make room for more water that you then have to filter.

What is the value add of continuous filtration here?

Why not just filter one pool's worth of water, using whatever process you want, fill it up, and be done with it? What's so magical about "fresh" East River water, aside from the presence of all of the nasty shit you have to work super hard to remove?

Their intention is for the pool to act as a filter to clean NYC's waterways[1]. Research into effective water filters could be worthwhile, but the floating pool seems to overshadow that aspect.

[1]: http://www.pluspool.org/about/

Foul. Just foul.

> But when it rains hard—a quarter of an inch in an hour might do the trick—some four hundred sewer pipes around the city begin flushing untreated waste, using the rivers as municipal lavatories.

> For the statistically inclined, the figure to watch is the number of colony-forming units (of bacteria) per hundred millilitres. Beach advisories are often set at thirty-five.

> The skies opened. Grzybowski sampled again, and the C.F.U. count in the river exceeded 24,196, the highest possible measurement. “Pretty much raw sewage,” he reported. The would-be swimmer felt a wave of compassion for the seahorses. ♦

This is true of many riverfront municipalities. 771 cities in the US have combined sewer overflows [1]. My partner monitors the pollution level in the Hudson across from NYC (in Hoboken) and when it hasn't rained in a few days the water is clean enough to swim. But after a heavy rain, it is, indeed, foul.

That said, the Hudson is ridiculously cleaner than it was 20 years ago. So much so that the Marine Borer (a type of worm that eats wood) has made its return and is destroying the old piles that hold up parts of the landfill on the waterfront. Unintended consequences, but worth it.

[1] List here: http://water.epa.gov/polwaste/npdes/cso/

Most of the time the water is safe for swimming.

http://www.nycswim.org/About/FAQ.aspx#1

Some of us swam across the Hudson years ago -- http://joshuaspodek.com/saturday_morning_hudson_river (with pictures from the disposable cameras we brought)

A really interesting story!

> It took about an hour of swimming.

> Not that the swim was “extreme,” but a lot of “extreme” things people do are actually planned and structured, which de-extremizes them. If you sky dive, for example, you’re doing exactly what someone planned for you. I don’t know of anyone who just decided to swim across the Hudson. Yet it’s easy. Anyone can do it anytime...

Requiring an hour of continuous swimming easily excludes most people, and makes it very dangerous. Swimming a mile is a big deal that requires a good deal of training. Something like 6 weeks of working on it continuously 3 days a week, with proper coaching. It's actually great workout goal. But just jumping in the water and doing it... it's pretty flabbergasting unless you had some idea of your long-distance swimming capabilities beforehand.

Considering the links at the end of the article, I'm guessing these are things you've considered quite in-depth-- even if it wasn't until you survived. Really fascinating stuff! Thanks for sharing.

That was the best and most inspirational thing I've read in a long time. Absolutely worth the read!

> I’m about to go swim across the Hudson. I suppose there is a chance I’ll die. It wasn’t suicide if I did. I was loving life. Better to enjoy it fully than not live it how you want.

Sublime. http://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/Photo17_8...

The NYC Triathlon swim leg is in the Hudson as well.

This year's takes place Sunday: http://www.nyctri.com/

That's awesome, and so are the photographs!

This exists already in Zurich. Sort of.

There is a river (a very clean river, of course) that flows through Zurich, and there is a 200 foot or so length of the river that is buoyed/strung off to form a decent sized "pool".

You go downstream, jump in, and swim upstream. You're swimming in the actual river, just inside a marked off area with a nice deck on one side. It's really quite well done.

Here it is:

http://www.zuerich.com/en/visit/sport/lower-letten-river-poo...

In Bern, there's a "pool" I used to love going to. It's got normal pools, but there's also the opportunity to jump into the river, where the currents will easily carry you half a mile in no time.

http://www.bern.com/en/activities/adventure-fun/river-swim/m...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dc1vmzjwJE

Why not just fill it with fresh, chlorinated water? This project is never going to happen without chlorination.

The NYC Dept. of Parks has already done that (and with free admission!) [1], so perhaps the novelty has worn off.

[1] http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/barrettopointpark/facilitie...

Yeah, I'm confused. I'm assuming the NY Health Department will be the ones that certify the pool as usable by the public or not, right?

So this whole dashboard mess is really useless: it's a binary decision. Is the pool safe or not? I mean yeah, if you want a nifty graphic screen showing how messed up the river is then go nuts. But I'd rather not know that the water is "kinda okay" for swimming. Either it's safe or it's not.

what is this dashboard you are referring to?

In most municipalities, all public pools require testing daily. One can assume they're just going to test daily before opening like all the other pools and use that decide whether to open.

http://dashboard.pluspool.org/

Sure you can do that, for safety( and it is really easy ). But I think the larger goal here is to develop methods for filtration; it doesn't use electricity, machinery and uses local water.

I think this is the best example of what a project on kickstarter is supposed to be.

You'd still need chlorine to keep the swimmers' bodies from fouling up the water, unless you're substantially refilling continuously.

Read the parent post of my comment.

because its not just a floating pool, its a pool that uses the actual water of the east river and filtration.

The +Pool has been one of my favorite projects to follow. When I think about the most compelling kickstarter marketing efforts, it always springs to mind. I'm always encouraged to hear about their progress. It's hard to believe just how filthy the East River is. :(

Actually, I know that a similar idea has been used before in late 19th century, earlier in the 20th century, except it was much cruder. Basically a section of the river was marked off by nets and people could swim in them. I know some resorts still use a similar method, but again the filtering is only for very large particles.

The hard part is the filtering. Developing an effective filtering method for such a large body of water would be an impressive achievement.

Berlin has a floating pool build from an old ship. https://www.google.com/search?q=ARENA+BADESCHIFF&tbm=isch

"Technically, Norfolk has more gross tonnage."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com