Hi I see you would like a saltish water pool but I query the choice of a steel frame and walls with salt water, yes I know it will be PVC lined but saline and steel do not mix.
Have you considered a semi enterre pool? dig down as deep as you can to bed rock, and scrape/borrow or even buy enough soil to cover the sides and perhaps give yourself some margeles? The South sloping sides could be used to hold your solar panels.
I have a kit built in ground pool with no ferrous parts the sidewalls are made from Graphite reinforced plastic as are all the nuts and bolts etc. Polystyrene sheet can be added to the sidewalls. I had a Fibre reinforced concrete base laid over the bedrock and smoothed to shape, then a thick 'carpet' before fitting the PVC liner.
Appologies Shona, it appears that Du toit are no longer trading, I am affraid that is a sign of the times with another producer of polyester resin pools near me having closed recently and they were there for at least 10 years. Did you manage to find anthing for your pool fence?
Hmmm dynamite, ok maybe not!
Yes if you can lay the paving slabs level and no wobbly ones that would be ok but in all honesty on top of that or possibly substituting it I would use 50-80mm of extruded polystyrene. The insulation properties will help no end and it can easily take the load of the water. Your neighbours even with their heating (out of interest what type of solar, black mats, evac tubes?) haven't got the benefit of insulated walls and floor so keeping that heat energy in is the issue. Sadly a pool further down has been built without insulation mainly because the french builders couldn't understand the concecpt. Well we know it works in The UK and we are a lot cooler there than France. I know the brico's sell extruded polystyrene at reasonable prices and that would cut down the heating requirements in spring and autumn but more importantly would allow you to use the pool. Of course you will need the essential pool cover to contain the heat, thin foam cover for out of season and a bubble cover to augment the heating system at other times possibly. For a brief look at pools using this technique on the inside whereas you would fix to the outside have a look at http://www.thermapool.co.uk/
Hi John - thanks for your response. Sinking the pool into the ground is impossible without dynamite and a squadron of Royal Engineers. So it has to be above-ground; however I can follow your advise on insulation - thanks.
We live at altitude on the edge of the Massif Central in Cantal. We have neighbours with a good quality in-ground pool + solar heating and their pool never gets above 27 degrees. Sorry but this is still 2 degrees too cold for me. Consequently I need a heat pump to get my proposed pool to 29-30 degrees max.
I am thinking about buying an above ground 10m x 5m x 1.22 steel walled pool from Zyke. Can I get away with paving stones for a base ? or must it be a solid concrete base ?
Just to make it clear, I meant the all in one pump filter setups from the box shifting companies. I am well aware that they also do other separate filters which are good quality and I am examining all of the ones I can find with the aim of providing information on which ones are best. All part of the service!
Hi Nick, It would be handy to know what the other alternatives are that you have and here is why.
Think of a central heating radiator, it's made from thin pressed sheet steel and contains hot water, now put that in the garden....................
I am not saying it's not doable but if you can attach a minimum of 50mm of polystyrene to the sides and the bottom you will improve things no end. Liner manufacturers specify that the maximum temperature for the liner should be 28-30 deg normally with armoured liners slightly higher at 32-34 deg. An inground pool does have the benefit of some insulation from the earth around it (providing it's dry earth) My pool has some insulation and a good clear bubble cover, during the normal summer, we often have to remove the cover to allow it to cool down from 30deg and it has no heating other than the sun.
With the Zyke, Cash Piscines etc pump and filter setups, you get something that looks ok but doesn't perform as well as expected. This means using a fair amount of electricity for the pump which really could be done for a lot less electricity so savings of around 85-90% could be achieved on the electricity costs. The cheap filters don't generally backwash the filters very clean so you get a build up of crud in the filter which plays havoc with trying to run a pool easily. I personally believe a huge number of issues on pool maintenance are down to insufficient backwashing of the filter. You could go for a cartridge filter system if you don't mind stripping the filters out and cleaning them regularly.
Now onto just a salt pool.
In short you can't just do that. When you see a salt pool it is in fact a chlorine pool where the salt is used to produce chlorine via an electrical current. That sterilises the water of bacteria and some virus's. Without that you will just have a stagnant salt pool. The ocean has a salt content of 35000 ppm salt and has an entire Eco system maintaining it and in the case of the Mediterranean it to is slowly stagnating. A domestic pool is only 4000 ppm of salt usually and doesn't have big crashing waves to make the water active.
There are natural swimming pond/pools but these are a different concept where an additional regeneration zone around 50-75% of the pool size of selected plants etc act to slowly keep the water in check bacteria wise. The water still runs through filters and some chemicals are used to keep levels of some unwanted chemicals in check. However with things like weils disease, I am still to be convinced that swimmers would be safe. I really believe it is the softer landscaping of natural pools which people find attractive compared to a more formal swimming pool but I digress.
Hi, My garden has bed-rock quite close to the surface so I want an above-ground pool. It needs to be large ie about 9mx4mx1.22m and it needs to be heated. I've got a short list of three providers at moment and in the lead is Zyke, a steel walled, PVC lined, pool with ladder, sand filter plus a 9kw heat pump; all for 3,000€ not incl the paving stone base. I do not want chemicals, just salt-water. If the water doesn't get to around 28deg I'm unlikely to use the pool ! Before I go for it can anyone see a problem with this set-up/or suggest something better for a similar price ?
Hi Shona, there are several companies making/selling pool fencing, have a look at du toit pool fence to see if that is the one, posting a picture may help as someone may recognise it.
Hi John (and many thanks for starting up this group by the way)
I've got a question that maybe you or some other member of the group could answer for me.
We've got a 10x5m pool in the garden of the house we bought last year. So far.....following the instructions left for us by the previous owners....we've had no problems (says she touching wood) with maintaining the Ph levels of the water, and on a sunny day it's looking good.
The pool's got the requisite security fence, a sunlounger distance away from the water on one side and on the opposite side, during the summer, it's moved away from the poolside and is stuck into the grass. (I know this because when we came to see it last year it was in this position ) My problem is that I expected the past owners to have left the pipes, or whatever the fence was stuck into, in the grass, but they aren't there, and the past owners are no longer contactable.At the moment the fence is in the stone surround of the pool, but I want to move it before we get guests coming to stay at our gites.
Do you have any idea where I could buy these post holders? I've tried to find them on the internet, but so far have drawn a blank.
Thanks in anticipation......Shona.
Thanks Roger, sorry I didn't respond earlier. I get deluged in emails from other discussions but didn't see this one until just now. Thanks for the posting. That looks like a straight forward installation.
Sorry to jump in in this thread - but I’m a newbie and haven’t found a way to create a new post! We too are having a nightmare with a green pool. The most likely problem is that out salt cell electrolyser needs cleaning or replacing (we’ve tried just about everything else!) But … I can’t find any instructions on how to access it. The pool we have inherited is a Desjoyaux Jd Sel system and I’ve had a look in the filter box - but can’t see anything g that would be obviously straight forward to access and remove. Can anyone point me in the right direction please? Thanks in advance, Sue
Sue you should have something like this with leads goint to it after the filter. Do you have the bag filters or a sand filter?
In the meantime buy 20ltrs of eau de javel from a brico and tip in about 5 ltrs.
Tell me the size of your pool and the water test results (not from dip strips) use the eau de javel to save your salt cell whilst we look at the situation. The water should turn blue grey within a few minutes.
https://images.app.goo.gl/fmkYTfVRu9ECFMEv9
Thanks for those photos. I think we were looking at the right bit - just can’t move the ‘nuts’ and no suitable tools. We have a bag filter and have already tipped shock, ph minus, slow chlorine salt, more shock, more of everything… We have switched the electrolyser off - as either it isn’t working or the salt was originally too low. It should essentially be a chlorine pool now - but shock gives a short period of improvement and then it deteriorates rapidly. It’s a 10 x 5 pool and strip tests (sorry that’s all we have) show everything ok except chlorine which refuses to lift from rack bottom. I think it’s a lost cause now as we go home soon. We will look to put something fully automatic in ahead of next year - and hope that will take the headaches away! If anyone had any comments on automatic dosing /level control - those would also be good!
Ps apologies for the typos - just replying in my phone
Rather than just tipping stuff blindly in, go buy the eau de javel and tip in half (10 litres) this will kill the algae in hours. If you leave without doing it youll come back to a swamp!
Look for a strap wrench whilst you are out, Boa make a basic and pretty weak one, stronger ones are available with kevlar in the strap these are very strong.
Sadly with Desjoyaux it does take longer to clear the pool generally because their filter bags are more strainer than filter. But keep the chlorine up for the remainder of your visit and youll be safe to leave it.
Me too on the small screen its hard to see.
With Desy, everything is ok whilst its ok, when things go wrong you find out that most of the stuff is working at its upper limit already so it cannot cope when it goes a bit green. Salt chlorination is ok as a form of automation but upgrading from the unit Desy supply helps but the biggest and best change is getting rid of the awful bag strainers and changing to a sand filter with Dryden Aquas AFM ng glass media, the best you can buy, never needs changing and filters finer than any other media so lowers the load chlorine has to deal with.
Your pool has always been a chlorine pool the chlorine is just made from the salt solution. The cells often get calcified and need cleaning, with most cells its a short circuit by the connection between the plates that causes the issue, better units have different arrangement to prevent or minimise this issue. If you want to go direct chlorine dosing there are units available but you pay for what you get with safety issues like the type of pump, over feed alarms and cut outs.
Many thanks for everyone’s replies. I think we need to go for damage limitation now as we leave for the uk this weekend. We will start investigating how much (or little!) attention and automatic dosing and level system would require in our absence as that seems the most likely long term solution 
Sue
