bluepools

More pools completed in 2005 /2006

Will Witt
Jonzac
30th July 2006

Pool at Gemozac

We commenced excavation of this 12 m x 6 m pool just before the end of 2005 and completed the structure mid Feb 2006. As usual with winter built pools we had to wait until early April for weather that was warm enough to install the liner.

The pool was unusual in three respects:

• It was for the use of the occupants of the 3 gites at the clients gite complex and so the pool had to be designed to the DDAS filtration requirements - 4 skimmers, 6 water inlets and two complete pump and filter sets - to provide complete water treatment in about 4 hours.
• The excavation for the pool was in hard rock - we knew this and allowed an extra 3 days for the excavation work - in the end it took 3 weeks and caused a lot of wear and tear on the 10 tonne digger - as it was our mistake the client was not charged for this
• The weather in January / early February was very cold and wet - and the site was very exposed - this sort of job could really put you off France!!

   

  

However the photos show that the pool looks good now that it is finished - and the client is very happy with it

 

 

Pool near Montendre

This pool was quite small at 9 m x 4 m but it took a long time to build because of the retaining walls and new fosse toutes eaux a

nd filter bed that was required.

This was the site before we started

This was taken during the screeding of the pool floor

Pool near St Jean D'Angely

Another quite small pool that we finished a couple of months ago

References

We are totally commited to the provision of the luxury pools that our clients order from us. There are always some issues and problems that we have to put right but we never ask our clients for the last payment until these are resolved. Consequently we can provide contact details if you wish to ask any of the owners of these pools about the quality of our pool installation work.

Regards

Will Witt

Why pool projects can go so badly wrong

Will Witt 19th July 2006

I was a bit shocked at the weekend when I realised how long it has been since we added any posts to this blog and so I will be making a special effort to keep it more up to date. As promised I will bring you up to date with the pools that we have built recently at the weekend.

During a long drive back to the office from the site of a pool that we are building near Mirande in Department 65 I was reflecting on the lessons that we have learnt from recent projects and thought it might be useful to share these.

Water, water everywhere!

The most striking issue is that of the last 6 pools that we have built - we have found large volumes of water during the excavation for 3 of the pools. This always causes a major problem because:

• The water makes the ground supporting the pool unstable
• It is impossible to complete the pool unless the water level can be reduced
• The likelihood of catastrophic failure if the pool ever needs to be emptied

Why is the water there? - it may be leaking drains or the effluent from a sewage filter bed fed by the fosse septique or water from the roof drainage. These are all easy to deal with because the flow can be diverted or blocked off. But what if the water is there because of a high ground water table. There may be millions of gallons in the hill above your property that makes it impossible to drain your pool excavation.

In all the three pools mentioned above the water was caused by a high ground water table. This highlights why a site investigation is so necessary - but even a site investigation may not discover that there is water problem because the ground water table level will vary from summer to winter and can even rise half a metre after an intense summer storm.

How do we get over this problem?

The solution always depends on the sub-soil conditions at the site.

If the sub-soil is gravel it may be impossible to build the pool below the ground water level - particularly in late winter or early spring when ground water levels are at their highest. The only solution is to lift the pool level and provided it with decking and-or landscaping to integrate the pool into its surroundings.

If the subsoil is solid clay it is unlikely  that ground water is feeding into the pool excavation and so  a drain needs to be installed beneath the pools lowest level and the water pumped out.

In really difficult circumstances (this applied to all of the 3 pools mentioned above) - the ground may be a mixture of clay, gravel and or rock with seepage occuring at various levels. In these circumstance each pool needs a bespoke solution that may involve numerous wells with pumps and large volumes of reinforced concrete to stabilise the foundations of the swimming pool - this is what we did in each case.

What are the implications for pool purchasers?

The most obvious implication is that it is very difficult to install a kit pool in these circumstances - if you have bought a kit and hit water during installation fill the hole up to about half a metre above water level with concrete and build the kit pool walls up from that level.

What do you do if you think you have water logged ground in your garden

You could consult an expert but because there is a bewildering variety of kits for both above ground and inground pool installations on the pool installation market as well as the traditional installers that build reinforced concrete filled concrete block and rendered pools with liners, reinforced concrete filled polystyrene block pools with liners (As we install) and tiled reinforced concrete pools it will be difficult to get objective advice. I recommend that:

1. If economy is your main consideration - buy and install an above ground kit pool
2. If you must have an inground pool get a traditional installer to provide a liner pool because below ground pool  kits are not suitable for waterlogged ground - and tiled pools leak! - see elsewhere in this blog.

What other problems have we come across recently?

We keep meeting clients (or are told about friends of clients) who have had problems because their pool installer has run into financial difficulty.

The reason for this happening is that pool installation is a very competitive and risky business and this results in numerous bankrupties of quite large French companies.  There are many  installers that cut their margins to get work and this results in the following:

• Poor or non-existant after sales service
• Non-completion of pools after the builder has received most of the money
• Failure to replace faulty parts

What can you do about it?

What you cannot do is to refuse to pay the pool builder any money until he has finished the pool. None of us could operate on that basis because the cost of the materials and labour involved is so high that we would effectively be operating as bankers as well as pool builders

What you can do is

Ask your pool builder for:

• References from 3 recent clients of the pool installer - pick one and telephone him
• A balance sheet from the previous years trading
• A sight of the company bank statement that is less than 3 months old

These three simple checks may reveal issues that you are not comfortable with - if your pool installer cannot provide a satisfactory explanation then go elsewhere!

What else have we discovered recently?

We install the best quality pump and filtration equipment (manufactured by Hayward) that is designed to provide a complete pool water change in 6 to 8 hours. Even with this equipment we still find that pool water quality can sometimes be a problem. We can only imagine what the water quality is like in pools that only provide a water change every 20 hours or so.  We have also found that many other manufacturers pumps fail quite quickly and that their fiberglass filters can split and leak.

Pool Alarms

We are all waiting to see if the law is going to change so that pool alarms are outlawed. We find it quite odd that many people install an alarm at an unoccupied property and assume that they are complying with the law. The alarm is only lawful if there is someone within earshot of the pool that can respond to the siren.

In our experience pool alarms are very unreliable - but the makers require the alarm to be returned to them if faults arise - but how can you be complying with the law if the alarm is being repaired elsewhere.

Pool safety fences mat not be attractive - but they do work and with a bit of careful design they can be largely hidden behind shrubs etc.

Regards

Will Witt
Bluepools SARL

Pools completed in 2005 / 2006

Will Witt, Jonzac, 17th July 2006

Pools completed at the end of 2005 and in early 2006

It has been a while since we have added to the blog - mainly because I have been constantly out of the office on our far flung pool sites. The popularity of the website is now attracting a steady stream of clients and Luke has also been very busy in providing both a prompt and comprehensive response to potential clients inquiries.

I thought that you may be interested in the pools that we have completed at the end of last year and early this year and so this Post will be complimentary to our Case Studies web page.

Pools in the Dordogne

Last year we completed a couple of pools in the Dordogne - both quite close to Eyemet - for a property developer from the UK. Ground conditions were good in one and poor in the other. We also installed a new fosse toutes eaux system on one of the sites and a new filter bed at the other. Both pools were equipped with a heat pump to allow swimming in the spring and autumn as we understand that our client is going to let both properties for holiday accommodation.

Pool near Cognac

After completion of the Dordogne pools we moved north to a project near Cognac. This pool was at the bottom of a valley and it turned out that the ground water level was only about half a metre below the ground surface. The ground was also very soft and we had to install a completely reinforced concrete floor over the entire pool area. We were obliged to pump and lower the local ground water table for the entire 4 weeks that were required to build the pool structure. There is no doubt that any attempt at an installation of a kit pool would have resulted in a very expensive failure. However you can see from the photos that the pool was successfully completed and has been in use for the whole of the summer up to now. It was also equipped with a heat pump and a safety fence as can be seen from the following photographs. There is no doubt that this was our most difficult installation to date. The client payed an extra 15% of the original pool cost for the extra work that we did in overcoming the various problems.

Please remember that we are pleased to give any of our old clients as a reference before any contract is signed with a new client. We can only do this just before the contract is signed as we cannot constantly bother previous clients when a project is still in the evolutionary stage.

That is all for now - I will bring you all further project news next week

Regards

Will Witt