We have been quiet for the last few months on the news front, but we have definitely been busy!

Our first project in France turned out to be a success but there were points when it didn’t look like it was going to be. The thing about building outdoor swimming pools is there’s no hiding from the weather. Before the project started, talking to the client, locals and checking past weather patterns we thought we would have a dry site for the vast majority of the build and we started on site full of optimism.

The dig went as planned and all was well, then the rain started. Considering this was early march and it hadn’t rained for almost a year we thought we were due a bit of rain and sat it out for a day or two, it then continued and eventually turned into snow.

We were faced with making a decision, do we stay or do we go? There were many factors involved but what eventually drove the choice to pull off site was the combination of clay soil being impossible to work in when wet especially with heavy machinery, the limited deliveries that could make it up the track to site and the freezing night time conditions preventing the pouring of the concrete. We decided to pull off site for 4 weeks to allow the weather to settle and warm up.

Although we had some wall collapse after the rains during the break that we had to put right by re-digging and re-laying the base, in the end we were thankful for this decision and we all came back full of renewed enthusiasm.

We did continue to have regular thunderstorms, almost daily in the afternoons, which slowed work but the temperature was much higher and things were drying out quicker making the conditions workable and we made good progress. The outstretched valley in front of the house was also an incredible sight when the storms did roll in.

Aside from the weather we learnt a lot from our first French project including how not to rely on deliveries in France (ordering well ahead of time is a must), how to avoid going shopping during French lunch hour (sometimes 2 or 3 hrs long) and how to negotiate a discount in the French builders merchant.

The construction of the pool itself went very smoothly and we also won the landscaping contract half way through the pool build giving a much more polished finished product than if it had just been the pool by itself.

We worked with local contractors and our regular live-in team to produce a stunning pool in a beautiful location that we are extremely proud of and happy to call Gaius Aqua’s first French pool.