Dordogne Retreat - a farmhouse tale

After the poor weather at Easter we decided to fit a pool heater to allow us to use the pool anytime between April and October. The heater is a 'heat pump' and takes heat out of the air and warms the pool water. It has an efficiency level of 4 so every unit of electricty generates 5 units of heat! Well so they say.... All I can say is that on this trip it took the pool from 21 degrees to 28 in 3 days!

All the work on the pond seems to be paying off as on this visit the water is very clear allowing you to see all the leaves and debris on the bottom!

It doesn't look much in this photo but I found time to start backfilling behind one of the pool walls. The grey stones are about 40 cms deep and it took 15 trailer loads, all shovelled by hand (because I am not allowed a mini-digger!!), probably around 3 tons in all!

Each year the invaders get bigger and bigger, this year we have some wild cats in one of the outbuildings! Hate to think what we will have next year!

After the footings were laid it was just a simple matter of laying about 160 blocks!

Most of the walls built are only single block, with just one corner being 4 blocks high.

It all looks good, now allw e need to do is fill it in, poor the concrete and lay the 120 square metres of slabs!

To define the edge of the terracing around the pool we had to dig about 40 metres of footings! The digger helped with about 30 metres of it in about 2 hours. The remaining 10 metres took 2 days by hand!