My Greenhouse!

A very expensive greenhouse!! I shall not be calculating how many geraniums I have to overwinter successfully to pay for it!

New Baby Guinea Pigs

Welcome to our two baby editions to La Lohuas "Bubble" and "Squeak"

New Pool photos

Professional photographer Dan Pix (what a great name for a photographer!) came on holiday here a couple of weeks ago and took some great pictures of the swimming pool for me. You can visit his website on http://www.danpixphotograp​hy.co.uk/

Runner Ducks

Our new editions are three Indian Runner Ducks - Ferdinand, Caramel and Tilly. They are three months old and a little shy at the moment, but very sweet. Quack!

New arrivals

Our batch of 11 chicks were born on Saturday 4th June.

Waterfall

I'm very happy with my waterfall - it pumps water directly from the heat pump, so gives you a warm massage!

Pool finished

Finally - after 6 months hard work, it is ready - first holiday makers arrive tomorrow. I am very happy with the end result!

Gravel

14 tons of gravel to transform the courtyard from a building site into a finished product!

The BIG moment!

All is working! The pump started to work on Friday evening - the water was at 11°
Hugh braved the water today at 15° and swam all afternoon when the temperature reached 17°. I'm not sure when I will go in yet ....

Filling up No 2

The water ran for 17 hours and about half filled the pool last night. The water was then stopped so that the holes could be cut out for the skimmers, return valves and lights - this is so that the liner could stretch with the weight of the water, thus ensuring that the holes were made in the right place. Water is now running again and it should be up to level for the test of the filtration unit and the heating started tomorrow morning.

Filling up!

The liner is finished and the water is going in (the bubbles under the liner are designed to be flattened by the tension made by the weight of the water).... It may take a while to fill - the pictures with Hugh (he was promised the first swim!) were taken when the water had been running for two hours. A picture of Jeff and me sitting on the steps happy that it has been finished (Jeff, a friend of mine, has been working with me on the pool since the beginning)

Progress !

No blogging for a while now - I've been so busy. To cut a long story short, I had some problems with my pool supplier and so had to go and find someone else who could finish the job for me. We had to redo the concrete bottom of the pool, as it had been badly affected by the frosts in the winter - this was done with a self leveling solution or ragreage.




Following this I needed to lay a felt underlay before the liner could be laid - a complicated task because of the rounded form of the bottom - there cannot be any overlapping pieces, or any folds - lots of cuts and gussets!












The slots for hooking the liner into at the top of the walls have been protected up until now by a plastic strip - this needed to be removed before the liner was fitted.





Today the liner started to go in - the first step was to solder a small strip along the top of the wall sections in order to slot it into the slots shown above.


After this the liner started to go in.

Fence posts

We have been putting in the fence posts which are held by galvanised steel brackets which need to concreted into the ground. Because of the slope of the ground we have sunk plastic drain pipes into the ground and filled them up with concrete to give them strength, then sunk in the galvanised supports with a large piece of scaffolding pole welded to the bottom to give them extra hold.

The fence slats have been put in to four high, just to ensure that we have the right spacing between the posts whilst the concrete drys.

Fencing posts

We need to put in fencing posts down the driveway to hold the panel fencing. The problem is that the ground falls away towards the entrance to the pool, so we have decided to put in large diametre plastic piping to hold the post supports - we managed to borrow a large machine for drilling holes to place the plastic pipes vertically.

Another back breaking task!

The patio stones are beautiful, but they stain and mark very easily - this weekend I've been applying a sealant to protect them - this is a very expensive, but necessary product - it has cost me 550 euros for 25 litres, so I hope it works!

Pool cover finished

The pool cover is now finished. When I first started to think about a cover for the pool, I thought that I would buy a telescopic cover that opened up by pushing back ever decreasing sizes of roof and walls so that there was an open-air pool to finish. This was probably the most important decision of the whole swimming pool project, because (believe it or not) the cover costs more than the pool itself.

However, when I started to look at these covers there were two options :

on little wheels - which meant that it wasn't fixed to the ground and could fly away if there was a strong wind, which means that you have to bolt it down to the patio if there is a risk of wind. Well, the weather forecasts in France are about as good as in the UK - so I didn't want to risk that!

on rails - this seemed like a good idea at first, the rails are discreet - however, each section of the cover is a different size and for the length of cover that I needed (13 metres) I would need 8 sections, which meant 8 rails side-by-side across the patio - not pretty ...

The cover that I have opted for has a permanent roof, but the sides open with two windows in each section, this means that you can open one side, or the other, or both - or maybe just two sections if there is a prevailing wind, the closed side can act as a windbreak. Also you can just open a small section at the bottom allowing ventilation.

The ventilation is important - if it is a miserable day, you would keep the cover closed, but the fumes from the chlorified water are quite strong, so it is good to have a through current of air - this is not at all possible with telescopic covers.

The other advantage of the cover that I have, is that the roof is UV treated, so people who want to get a suntan can go and sunbath on the patio, but little ones in the pool are fully protected by the roof - an added advantage for me, because suncreams are a pool maintainers nightmare!

Pool cover construction