Dordogne Retreat - a farmhouse tale

With high temperatures and the help of the pool heater the pool went from 16 to 26 degrees in 2 days. The water was clear and the pool was very inviting. I did manage to swim three times and lie on the lilo for 30 minutes or so each time. It was wonderful!

Our Dutch Neighbour Ben did another great job for us by making some more railings for around the pool.  These are on the far side of the pool (from the house) and protect errant kids (and adults) from the nearly 2 metre drop in fromt of the equipment room!

They had only been up for a couple of weeks and were already sporting a lovely brown mottle finish. One of my tasks in the past week was to have primed them. However I ran out of time and only managed to paint the top rail and some of the bottom rail before dashing to the airport yersterday!

Opening the pool after the winter is always an interesting experience, not knowing what state we will find it in always adds a little trepidation as we open the cover. One year we had what can best be descibed as pea soup.

So as the cover slowly opened we were pleased to see that we only had a little algae growth this year and the only unwelcome rubbish was a dead frog.

With a good brush down of the sides and the addtion of some chlorine 'shock' tablets the pool looked great a couple of days later:

As inviting as it looks the temperature was 11 degrees when we opend it up, after a few warm days it climbed to 17 (without the heating) and will have been in the low 20's today. However as I returned to the UK this weekend the pleasure of a swim will have to wait for a few weeks !

 The major work item this summer was to get the area around the pool ready for concreting (next year?) and then tiling (year after?). This involved leveling one area that was too high, laying drains, and infilling with 20 tons of grey stones.

The leveling took over half a day as the problem was not soil but shale. After half an hour of trying by habd we used the digger and I suspect if the digger hadn't been there it would have taken days by hand.

Next job was the drains - installing 4 drains and links to the drainage from the terrace and garden.

 Shifting 20 tons of stone was accomplished with the digger:

 Drainage all covered:

 Job done and shown after the pergola was built:

There is a small area the other side of the pool cover where we ran out of stones but hey it looks good from this angle!

Since having the pool built we have put up a gazebo each year for shade and each year it has been destoyed by storms, and then rebuilt with increasing amounts of duck tape holding the metal frame together.

So this summer project number 2 was to build a wooden pergola with the idea of making a canvas roof which can be rolled up when not in use. After assembing the materials the rear uprights were set in concrete and attached with brackets to the wall: 

Then 4 concrete footing were poured for the front legs:

And magically it was all put together! In fact it only took a couple of days to make it. The old gazebo cover was used as the roof this year, amazingly it fitted perfectly.

The painting took almost as long as the construction.

 But with help from Sue, Izzie and Alan it was completed and looks the part.

Now over to the domestic department for the canvas cover.... lets see what happens next year!

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!