Converting traditional pool to natural pool

Does anybody have any experience on converting a traditional pool to a natural pool?

Our pool needs resurfacing, new tiles, and so forth. We’ve been getting quotes for the remodel, but we’ve also been interested in having a natural pool using plants for filters.

We’ve also contacted a natural pool builder, and we’re looking at about $50K for conversion, based on their pricing in Southern California. We’re in the San Francisco Bay Area,  and it’s been really hard to find a pool builder/remodeler, much less a natural pool builder.

We are not young and able to tackle all that work.

We would appreciate any thoughts.

I would resurface the inside of the pool with pond liner.
Then right outside the pond where decking would be I would also cover with pond liner too, maybe for 10ft on all four sides.
Then I would add a berm, and fill the pond and the sides with the pond liner "decking" all with water until  the water starts going over the berms/dam.
I would then cover the pond liner "decking area" with some sand and aquatic plants.
Maybe get a pump that cycles water from the botton of the pond to the sand/aquatic filter sides. I would also add some guppies/endlers/molly in the summer, mosquito season.

Maybe watching this video by David Pagan Butler, who is the author of Natural Swimming Pools will help explain the process and maybe a regular pool person could make these changes:

A step by step transformation of a conventional outdoor pool into an Organic Pool. This was a completed by the owners and friends with the intermittent help of David Pagan Butler. The pool has a relatively small planted zone so an Olive Bioflter (invented by David Pagan Butler), provides additional water cleansing

Here is another cool setup

Anne Miller wrote:Maybe watching this video by David Pagan Butler, who is the author of Natural Swimming Pools will help explain the process and maybe a regular pool person could make these changes:

A step by step transformation of a conventional outdoor pool into an Organic Pool. This was a completed by the owners and friends with the intermittent help of David Pagan Butler. The pool has a relatively small planted zone so an Olive Bioflter (invented by David Pagan Butler), provides additional water cleansing

Thanks I’ll check it out.

S Bengi wrote:Here is another cool setup

Thanks. I have seen this one. It looks more complicated than we can manage. We also don’t have the space. We have a suburban backyard. But we maybe able to get some useful information from it.