The ground work for the patio area is now finished – we are now ready for 15 tonnes of cement and 600 paving slabs, phew!

There are various pipes around the outside of the swimming pool to take the water to the sand filtration unit, which is compulsory for a “public” pool, which is what this is considered to be. The pump then takes the water through the heat pump and brings it back to the pool – it will circulate the entire volume of water (70m3) in one hour. There is also an additional tube, which will feed the waterfall feature. These have to be covered in fine sand to protect them, before we can infill with gravel.

The same day, we excavated a couple of trenches. One to take a drain from around the pool in case the ground gets waterlogged and disturbs the pool structure. The other trench was to feel electricity to the pump house. These were quickly back filled (before I had a chance to get the camera out) and you would almost never know there were there!

All of this work was washed down with a beer for the boys, whilst I did the school run!

Yesterday we finished putting in the metal reinforcements for the concrete and connecting the pipes which will suck the liner into place.

The pool walls need a level, solid base to stand on, here are Jeff, Yves and Hugh putting this in place

The lorry arrived with all the pieces of the swimming pool, very exciting and very big – the lorry couldn’t turn around in the courtyard, it was so big!

After waiting for three stressful days, the digger man finally arrived – and we now have a hole. The deep end of the pool slopes downward from the shallow end (furthest away).

Now awaiting delivery of the pool kit on Thursday…

The next step was to concrete the floor, the mix had to be very dry in order for us to form the rounded bottom of the deep end – this made it very hard to move it around and to smooth it down. In addition we had too much (for the walls we didn’t have enough!) cement – so we ended up shovelling lots out and putting it around the base of the walls outside. Unfortunately you can’t send concrete back and get a refund! Hey, ho!

The second shed has now come down – this was more difficult because I wanted to keep the wood – solid oak – for use in other projects, so it could not be bulldozed. Thanks to Yves, Hervé and Jeff for their help – we started at 10am and finished at 4.30 pm – payment was by means of coq au vin at lunchtime and a few beers at the end!

In order to make the gites a bit more saleable (two bad years after the financial crisis). I am going to put in a heated, covered 10m x 5m swimming pool. The pool will be heated by a heat pump (a bit like a fridge in reverse) and will be covered by a perpex cover which opens up either partially or fully on both sides.

Here is a photo of a similar pool