[New Environmental Law will impact heavily on Swimming Pool Owners]

I think the post by jond neatly sums up the situation - and we only

charge 1000 - 2000 euros for salt water chlorination systems in a new

pool - certainly not 4000!

[Fines for non compliance]

Sorry

last phrase should have read - "and alarms may even be removed then"

[Fines for non compliance]

We will all know when it happens because there will be a lot of

publicity - but this is probably not the main issue at the moment.

There seems to be a gathering consensus in the industry that

alarms  do not work - and I agree.  Unfortunately it is very

likely that sooner or later a child will drown and the pool alarm will

either be found to have been  deactivated because it was going off

at random times at day and night or it just did not work!

The alarms will then be removed from the approved list and everyone

will have to have an approved cover or a fence - and they cost several

times what an alarm costs.

The law is also up for review - this year I believe - and fences may even be removed then.

[New Environmental Law will impact heavily on Swimming Pool Owners]

I do have reservations about salt water chlorination but pumping out a

few hundred litres of  back wash water onto a lawn for instance is

not one of them - having said that no pool backwash water should be

allowed to get into water-courses for obvious reasons.

The salt concentration in salt water chlorination is about one tenth

of  sea-water and there are places in the world where crops are

regularly irrigated by waste water that has higher levels of salinity

than this. The point is that all plants and crops vary in their

resistance to salinity. In France where we have a quite high rainfall

the salinity also gets washed away every times that it rains and so

there is a constant natural dilution process at work. So if you pump

your backwash water out onto your lawn your grass may go a bit brown

for a while but you will not create a desert in your back garden!!!

What

is the advantage of salt water chlorination - In saltwater pools there

is 0.5 to 1.0 ppm chlorine and in traditional pools there is 3.0 - 10.0

ppm chlorine - if someone is very sensitive to chlorine then this could

make a big difference to their enjoyment of their swimming pool.

What are the disadvantages?

• It is more expensive to install - but cheaper to run
• In hard water areas like Charente-Maritime and the Dordogne the very
  hard water causes scale deposits to form on the electrodes. The cell
  then needs to be taken apart and the electrodes cleaned off with an
  appropriate acidic cleaner. This can even happen every month or so if
  the pH control is not rigorous.

If you want to read more about salt water chlorination please look at

my blog of December 30th here 

http://www.bluepools.typepad.com/bluepools/

[Dodgy After Sales Service]

I would like to clarify a few things as we are based in Jonzac. We do

not have an office in Lorignac and we have never worked for JJ.

We absolutely guarantee that we make sure that all our clients are 100%

satisfied with their pool before we ask for the final payment. We will

then attend the site and repair / replace anything that goes wrong with

the pool in the first two years of operation - provided that it has

been operated and maintained properly.

And the structures of our pools are guaranteed for life.

[Where to empty a pool?]

The micro-organisms that carry out the purification process in a fosse

system are very dependent on there being constant conditions in both

the tank ( where about 25% of the water purification takes place) and

the filter bed (where the remaining 75% of the pollutants and the

pathogens are removed).

If the fosse is suddenly loaded with the contents of a pool it will

stop working immediately - and maybe for a long time if the water has a

high chlorine content