INSTALLING THE SWIMMING POOL - part 1

The swimming pool was purchased in England as a kit from Christal Pools and delivered to the farmstead. This particular supplier was chosen primarily because of ease of installation, and one of the few designs available which did not require mountains of concrete reinforcement. As the pool was to be installed by just my wife and I, then the various components needed to be relatively easy to handle.

The design of the "double bubble" pool, effectively two circular pools joined together by a central U frame at the neck, ensures a self supporting structure, with no requirement for reinforcing. Additionally, it can be installed above or below ground or anywhere in between. In our case the site was sloping, therefore the pool would be below ground at one side, and slightly above at the other.

The kit was duly delivered in May of 2000, in fact we traced its progress from the UK to Paris and then to Poitiers by virtue of a string of phone calls from concerned hauliers all asking the same question - "Do you have a forklift?" The answer was always the same - "NO", and was greeted with the usual "No problem". I should have guessed what would happen - the truck arrived, too large to navigate the turn at the edge of the hamlet, and the driver asked the same question!!!

The life of the hamlet came to a grinding halt for two hours whilst we unpacked the pallet on the lorry and physically transported all the pieces to the site, whilst my neighbour's wife taunted the young driver for not having the skill to get the lorry around the corner!

As mentioned earlier, the site was sloping, and there was also the problem of the wall and some long established trees to be removed. In the event, even the excavator struggled to remove some of the bushes which had become intertwined with stone under the ground.


Chris, unfortunately, also brought along his dumper to remove the spoil. I say unfortunately, because the damn thing didn't have any brakes! It also had the ability to select forward AND reverse at the sane time! Stopping it was a matter of releasing the bucket and praying. Evidently my prayers were not enough - on my third trip to the bottom of the garden the bucket failed to release, the dumper demolished my neighbour's stone wall, then deposited a small mountain of soil into his garden!
Fortunately we have very understanding neighbours, and the soil came in useful! One day I guess he'll turn the wall into a rockery.







The shape of the "double bubble" pool also makes excavation easier. Being essentially two adjacent circles, the excavator can be positioned at the centre point of each "bubble" and most of the spoil removed in a circle without needing ro move the excavator. (Remembering, of course, to leave an exit route)

Because the pool excavation only needs to be a matter of inches larger than the pool structure then it is important to set up reference points outside of the work area, so that the accuracy of the excavation can be checked at regular intervals. We had already decided, for safety reasons, not to have a divewell. This simplified the excavation, although this design accommodates a divewell without needing to change the liner.

The main excavation took a further day, then followed two days of hand digging to ensure the site was level and the correct shape. At this point the U frame was installed on fast-set mortar pads and lined up. Progress was fairly rapid from this point on. The base rails were bolted together, mounted on mortar pads and the levels constantly checked and rechecked at each stage. Although it is not vital to get them millimetre perfect, the more accurate they are, the easier the panels bolt together. A water level was used for this purpose. If you use a water level always ensure that the pipe is not partially in shade (or sun), as this can drastically affect the accuracy. The panels are machined to a high accuracy and when bolted together should fit the base rails exactly. As usual, during the assembly of the panels, the temperature soared into the mid 30's.

The photograph on the left shows the pool structure after fitting the panels. The next stage was to screed the floor. Unlike most pools, the actual screed depth only needs to be around 4 to 5 centimetres. (I was dubious about this, however when we removed the liner a couple of years later the screeding was still in perfect condition.) Once the screed has set it was finished off with a coat of weak plaster, brushed on to provide a smooth finish. Soft sand is notoriously difficult to obtain in this part of France so we had to make do with river sand, thus the plaster finish. This was overlaid with a pvc underlay used for wood floors which we found ideal because it has self adhesive edges which makes it easy to butt join, keeps the whole thing in place without distorting, and is thick enough to protect the liner from any sand ingress.


Time to install the liner. Each liner is marked to line up with the neck point of the pool, ours of course was marked in the wrong position, which on our first attempt we didn't discover until the pool was partially full! Our fault for not blindly following the instructions. The normal method is to use a powerful vaccuum cleaner inserted between the liner and the pool panels to pull the liner into place. Our VAX just wasn't powerful enough to do this so we decided just to line it up and risk it. We were 95% successful but once the pool began to fill, it was evident that the liner was not quite straight. A year later, when we emptied the pool, we reseated the liner, this time by ignoring the marking and lining up relative to the liner seams - result - an absoutely perfect fit!