Swimming pool site visit

Today we were visited by Serena and her colleague from Systems-Pool (a recommended local swimming pool company of 30+ years experience).

We are looking to replace this wreck of an over ground pool with something slightly larger in the same location. It’s a fairly simple over ground pool that sits on one terrace in the garden and butts up against the terrace above allowing entry without having to climb up and over the side. The current dimensions are 7m x 4.5m. As you can see, it was planted on the other sides with a hedge to hide the panels – we have already had these cut down.

The location is sensible with a relatively short walk from the house. The lower terraces that are closer to the house are considerably smaller and the higher terraces are too far from the house. You could, of course, create a massive in-ground pool on the football pitch, but that is way above our budget and far too grand for our rustic farm house.

We discussed various options with the people from Systems-Pool and settled on a pool of similar construction to the existing one (which is too far gone to be renovated with a new liner). A prefabricated pool was considered, but that would need to be helicoptered in.

The proposed new pool will be 10.5m x 4.6m with a depth of 1.5m – similar to one of these.

The terrace above will be paved and provide plenty of room for loungers, a shower etc. The two widths will be decked, but you will not be able to walk all the way round as the terrace will not support decking on the lower length. The panels for that length will be hidden by wooden cladding. The housing for the filter etc will be under one of the decks.

It won’t be the fabulous pool of our dreams, but it should not require additional permissions and is in keeping with the house and our budget. They think they can do the work in the spring, so hopefully by next summer we’ll have a swimming pool.