Macker

Your dilemma depends on whether your pump and filtration system is below the pool level or above. The various feeds from the pool (bond de fond, skimmers, vac, etc) come in before the sand filter so altering the multi-valve has no effect at all, it's irrelevant. If your 'local technique' is above the water level then no problem, disconnect the valve, cut the pipe and replace the valve. If it is below water level (which it sound like it is) then you will need to block off the water supply before you can cut the pipe and replace the valve. You will need to run the pump with the bond de fond valve only open and then get someone to dive in the pool and put something like a frisbee over the bond which should suck on with the vacuum and then cut and change the valve before re-opening. Good luck!

We are a company established 5 years ago and have been expanding successfully in the swimming pool industry targeting the English community in the area. We are now looking to move into the French market and plan to launch an advertising and marketing drive to exploit our experience and commercial advantage on a much larger audience. We are looking for a bi-lingual contact who can respond to sales calls and deal with French customers in a knowledgeable and confident way and liase with management to drive the business forward. Initially we see the position as a part time and commission based role, however, we deal in high value products so potential commission will be good for every sale and we will be happy to respond to input and suggestions from any interested parties. Have a look at our website on www.vendeepools.com and if you think it is something you would be interested in call Brian on 06 31 17 25 60. It is important that you live in this area though so please don't reply if you don't.

I think this topic harks back to that age old discussion, as old as forums themselves - i.e. To use English or French workers. There is a strong thread throughout all these forums supporting the use of natives over English and undoubtedly a certain amount of snobbery that goes along with employing a French 'Artisan' instead of an English 'tradesman'. It might mean months or years of waiting, never knowing when the 'artisan' will turn up at a moments notice, do a half a days work and then dissapear for another few months before returning to finish the job and finally presenting you with a facture but never mind, it's all part of the charm of moving to France! Funnily enough, if it happened in England the same clients would be on the phone to 'Watchdog' within a week and writing furious letters to the local 'Handjob Advertiser' moaning about their lack of service. We ask for a 10% deposit upon acceptance of devis and 30% when materials are delivered on site and work commences and that still does not nearly cover our costs so we are running just as much a risk as the client. We make no profit until the job is finished and the final payment is paid so it is in our interests to always respond to the clients and make sure the work is completed on schedule or near enough. As Happy and Shark have said we cannot afford to finance your project for you for the first few months and why should we be expected to anyway? Luckily most of our clients appreciate the service we offer and have no qualms about our terms of payment and we also have good relations with our French competitors who regularly come over to check out the latest gizmos that we are offering our clients. And have a verre or two of course...

Try these, both recommended suppliers and installers http://www.mip-swimming-pools-france.com/ or http://www.piscinekitdirect.com/

Mr Veillon, Jean Luc 110 rue Georges Clemenceau St Hermine 85210 02 51 27 34 22

One man and dog (clean and well behaved) looking for somewhere to stay in the Vannes/Ploermel areas for 9/10 days commencing Feb 14/15. Any suggestions gratefully received.

As far as I understand from my dealings with various 'Mairies' (although it very much depends on your relationship with your particular establishment) an 'above ground' pool is one that requires an excavation of no more than a metre, is not made of concrete or any other 'permanent' material and requires no backfill so you could most likely get away with building a structure on your sloping site but you should remember that ALL above ground pools are designed to be assembled on a flat surface as this spreads the load onto the walls in equal measure so if you were to build a sloping structure to match the contours of your garden you would need to consider the huge load that would be brought onto the lowest wall by 70+ tons of water pushing against it. You might also consider the cost of a custom built liner - not cheap. It might be worth considering excavating into the hillside to create a flat spot for the pool and then build a decking surround which would be level at one end and raised at the other which you could probably claim as an 'above ground pool' but would still look the business.

Not meaning to be intrusive or anything but since you brought up the subject my curiosity got the better of me! You say that you're married with a young child but they didn't want to move to France so you just upped and left anyway!! A rover or not this does seem a little extreme but good luck in your search for companions anyway...

A heat pump is a slightly misleading name for the units most commonly used for pool heating. In fact they are heat 'exchangers' and work in much the same way as an air conditioning unit but in reverse, sucking in the heat from the ambient air and blowing out cold air. They don't actually have an element, that big thing you see is the coil that contains the working fluid that changes from liquid to gas as heat is absorbed from the heat source i.e. the air. At the beginning of the season you may well need to run the unit continuously for a week or so to bring up your pool temperature but thereafter a couple of hours a day should suffice and, in fact, the cost of a running heat pump over the season is minimal. An added advantage is the blast of cold air coming from the top of the exchanger that kids love on hot days! However, in the example mentioned above an 8kw heat pump is way too small for that size of pool.

As someone who rented many gites and now is a gite owner myself let me share my experiences with you. While holidaying in France on one occasion when renting with friends we arrived to find no towels provided despite the fact that we were paying over 1000 euros a week for the accommodation. When we enquired from the landlady she said that there would be an 'additional' charge of 40 euros a week for towels, the reason quoted being that 'people bring them down to the pool'. Really!! Isn't that one of the functions of towels? Guess what we did, went to the nearest Leclerc and spent that money on buying our own towels. On another occaasion we rented a gite in Brittany and arrived to find towels galore, bedding aplenty and they even came around at the end of the first week and changed the lot! Guess which gite I would stay at again and/or recommend to friends. Incidentally the first gite, although a lovely house, was spartan when we arrived and I mean that even the salt and pepper sellers were cleaned out. The Brittany one had a welcome pack, a half a jar of coffee and some tea bags, toilet paper, kitchen roll and many of the other comforts of life that had gathered over the previous tenants. i.e. we didn't have to steam off to the supermarket as soon as we arrived (which is just as well outside of working hours in France). Now that we own a gite ourselves I hope that all my experiences have come to bear and so we try to provide a homely experience that includes lots of little extras that really don't cost a lot but make the holiday experience more memorable for the client. I don't mean to sound corny, but your client has worked hard all year, planned their holiday in advance and are REALLY looking forward to that week/fortnight in the sun so it should be about what they want and not about inconvenience to you/stains on the towels/changing the linen/cost of washing machines etc etc etc. You are in a service industry in an extremely competitive market... what more can I say?

My main objection would be that that big boxy contraption containing the filtration unit and the ladder that you can't use are just plain ugly.

With all due respect Candide you did say that you had no idea if this advice was correct. I would suggest to you (as a pool professional myself) that for your size of pool you should consider at least a 20kw heat pump and a 32kw if you can push the boat out. A 14kw pump will have no difficulty in pushing up your summer water temperatures but will struggle in spring, early summer and the autumn and, after all, the main purpose of a heat pump is to extend the swimming season. You will find that you will have to run it for long periods and in very small increments to nudge up your water temperature at the beginning of the season when the air temperature is lower while a bigger pump will cope much more easily with this situation. It's a bit like buying a central heating system really, if you're sitting in your living room and it's not quite warm enough, it's probably a bit late to wish you had spent that bit extra and bought bigger radiators. The same principle operates for most aspect of pool management, it's always wiser to buy equipment that can manage your requirements easily rather than pushing at the limits of 'just about capable' units.

Make sure the chemical levels are good then cover it up, you should have no problems when you return apart from topping up a bit and you won't have to fish out a load of incects...

am also considering a 14kw heat pump for a 10m x 5m pool with a 75 cubic metre capacity, although I have no idea if this is correct. Macker, do you really mean a 32kw pump? How can you consider this option if you have no idea if it is correct? If you have a 10x5 metre pool with, say an average depth of 1.5m then you are really pushing the capabilities of a 14kw pump. It all boils down to volume and pump capacity so you will be able to raise the pool temperature yes but you will be running your equipment for long hours with all the running costs, wear and tear, replacement value etc. Like all of these things, it's a call between short term gain and long term expense I think.

Hi Macker, I am intrigued, why forget the roller cover? And if you had an abri would you need a summer cover? Surely the abri would do just as good a job, although up there I suppose the summer cover would help quite a lot... You can forget the roller cover if you have an abri because the abri supplies all the security requirements that the ANFOR regulations stipulate, However, you will most likely have your abri open for most of the day during the sum mer months but it is still a good idea to have a summer cover (for the sake of 400 euros or so) that can be easily put on and removed and will warm up the water, stop evaporation and keep the water temperature stable.

My advice; Forget about the salt water, for sparkly clean water you can't beat chlorine with a direct injection system Forget about the roiller shutter, you don't need it if you have an abri althought you will porbably make good use of a summer cover. Forget about cartridges for all the reasons outlinde by the other posters. And finally, for a pool that size with a volume of 70-80 cubic metres you would need a heat pump of at least 32kw.

Reinforced lintels are available at all builders merchants they are called 'prelinteau' and come ready reinforced. The terracotta ones have to have the steel inserted into them before the concrete is poured.

Wouldn't be much different than in England I should think thought probably a fair bit slower. How much money could a student photographer expect to make by putting a few prints around a few cafes and bars in say... Bristol. Not a lot I would have thought unless they are truly exceptional photos but nonetheless a very good way to get known, introduce youselves and meet lots of local people, both French and British...

There are many factors at play here. Are you going to be living here full time? Will you be letting the property to others? How many people might be using the pool at any one time? Have you considered the security issues? A swimming pool can become a money pit if you are not aware what you are getting yourself into. Installing the pool is the biggest cost but then you have to consider the add-on costs. You must, by law, have compliant security whether that is a fence or a cover and then you will also want a good sized terrace around the pool which is also costly but you need to remember that you will spend an awful lot more time on the terrace than in the pool so it is worthwhile making sure you budget for that as well. If you've taken all the initial cost into consideration and you just want a maintenance cost then it is wortwhile considering an automatic dosing system which is initially fairly expensive but will save you money (and grief) in the long term as you can utilise freely avaiable and cheap solutions from the hypermarkets rather that the overpriced 'pool systems' chemicals from the pool companies. The bottom line? If you set yourself up with a good dosing system you should be spending less than 10 euros a month on chemicals. Try to do it all manually and you could triple that and still not be guaranteed good water. You still need to consider clening and maintenance especially if you are not living here but I hope I've been of some help with your original question.

I'm a pool installer and my company installs every type of pool mentioned above and others too. What most people don't realise is that most pool companies in France are simply sales based operations and the actual installations are sub-contracted to people like me. Every pool company will try to convince you that their brand is the best but the truth is that all systems have advantages and disadvantages. As pointed out, liners can be punctured by careless useage but are very versatile and cost effective (wrinkles in the liner is just a sign of a non-professional installation) and they allow for a certain amount of seismic movement. Shell or fibreglass pools need a very labour intensive installation, good access for cranes, flatbed truck etc. They provide a quick solution but are prone to fading and discolouration and they cannot be emptied without specialist help or they might implode and if they become damaged they can be expensive to repair. Concrete pools, whether tiled or lined, are expensive and time consuming to install and they do not allow for any movement of the earth. On the other hand they are extremely solid and durable and difficult to damage (with oars, flippers etc). The bottom line is that any properly installed pool should come with a warranty of at least ten years and many come with twenty. On balance, I tend to agree with Poolguy that liners are the best option. They are no more difficult to clean than tiles or fibreglass and much easier to repair and in the event of catostraphic damage they can be replaced for a couple of thousand euro, a lot cheaper than replacing the entire pool. And if, after ten years or so, your pool is looking a bit faded and sad you can whip out the old liner, pop in a new one and your pool looks like a brand new one again. If you use a direct chlorine system you will find that cleaning should not be a real issue anyway, a quick wipe down once a week will suffice.

We've been operational three years and I'd say 12-14 weeks would be the most you could expect unless you could find some kind of niche marketing to attract other than the VAST majority of Vendeé holidaymakers i.e. families with kids looking for sand, sea, sun. If you get two or three weeks outside of June to September you will be very lucky.

Yes it will, you shouldn't need to do this very often so long as you keep the chlorine level even thereafter but make sure you dilute the acid first before you put it in the pool. At first it might make the water cloudy but the chlorine will soon clear that up and you will be back to clear water.

Save yourself a few quid and avoid all the hugely overpriced taylor made pool products in the bricos. Basically, the hot weather and your water conditions have caused your ph to get too high hence the algae growth. Get yourself some hydrochloric or sulphuric acid from any of your bricos (usually stored near the cleaning products) at about 1 euro a litre, dilute about 20:1 and bung it in the pool near to the exit from the pump while its on so it circulates (you shouldn't need more than a couple of litres). Keep your chlorine levels good and your water will be clear in a couple of days. However, you really DO need to kep on top of the filters as someone else said otherwise you are just breaking down dirt and recirculating it into the pool.

"These hollow terracotta bricks are only used for partition walls (cloisons) as you say" No they're not, they are increasingly using them to build entire houses due to their lightness, ease of construction and good thermal qualities, they also use longer vesions for lintels and fill them wirh concrete afterwards. In fact I have seen entire houses constructed from nothing else but terracotta bricks and concrete/mortar, can't vouch for the strength though.

I know this has surely been dealt with in the past but I've trawled through the archives and can't find an answer. Basically, I've got one dish on my roof already connected to a sky box and reciving all the usual. I want to put another one up for our gite, have put up the dish, pointed it in the same direction as the other one but no joy. The signal strength and quality are both 75% and the telly is picking up British time but the network stream is staying at 0000 and it keeps coming up saying 'No satellite signal is being received'. I've tried switching it on and off etc, rebooting, takinng the card out.... Any ideas welcomly received...... Cheers