the story of Val dolphin's second swimmimg pool

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(back) to this site's index & contact page	swimming places designed and built by Val dolphin: Suzanne's Pool built 1994-5 near Lanjaron, Spain	the link image in the Pools Centrefold
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this page's sections the cast tent with a view plans the dancing digger the job robin misty mountain block-work earth, wind and fire pondering.... treatment tubo grotto and valve city anatomy tile wallpaper stretchy steps water curtains

the cast		scroll to: top \| this \| next
Maggie....	At least a dozen people were involved at various stages of the making of this pool. Maggie started the ball rolling by introducing Suzanne to me. Some connoisseurs of James Bond films may recognise Maggie in the photo in a guise not typical of her real life modesty. Maggie took paying guests at her house in the Alpujarras, and Suzanne had been such a guest. They came to visit me while I was constructing the eco-heating system at Cortijo Romero. Suzanne's first visit to the area resulting in her enchantment, had been a holiday at Cortijo Romero. She was a strikingly attractive looking woman in the prime of life, with stylishly cropped hair, and eyes that she always kept sharply lined with black, as if their 10,000 volt shock without liner would have been insufficient. To point a camera at her would have been too much for either self or equipment, I suspect, so I never dared try it.
Suzanne drove her infant son around in an incongruously shiny silver and red Mitsubishi 4x4 pram. She had a relaxed, lion-like confederate who busied himself in England, who I only ever once met. The space between Suzanne and me was nearly always crackling like a storm about to break, the black swallow's wings of her eyebrows forever furling and unfurling, flickering like the inaudible lightning in the upper atmosphere. My partner, Evelyn, a psychotherapist who was able to relate to most personalities - mine, for instance! - helped us keep up a working friendliness for the most part. We will come to when the storm did eventually break! Otherwise, Suzanne and I kept ourselves much to ourselves. Her occasional visits to the proceedings, with busy brows and distraction, were sometimes to ask me to mind the baby whilst minding the job! Our very different driving forces - her with her child rearing and it's social circle, with the pool as merely an unavoidable adjunct to them - and me with consuming interest in implementing art and environmental technology - these were no doubt focal in the tension between us. Perhaps if I were not also adhering to a diet beyond most people's comprehension, due to my attempts do deal with my arthritis, we would probably have eaten together and got to know each other a bit.

I subcontracted the more routine parts of the structural work to my friend Trevor, who I had previously subcontracted work to. Trevor in turn paid a friend of his, Neil, to peon, ie labour, for him. The arrangement worked quite amicably. In addition, various others friends and visitors, who were up for it, took on specific tasks: a lad escaping England just for the summer built the stone retaining wall beneath the waterfall, Denis (pronounced d'nee) from Twin Oaks Community in the USA made a made-to measure door for the pump house. Andy tried to get the tiles on quicker than was good for them; Evelyn, besides providing more moral support than I can ever credit her for, also fixed the odd square metre with great dexterity. Gary shot Hi-8 video of many of the highlights of the job, but unfortunately tracking down the tapes, though they would be enthralling, is not on my current agenda!... and Bloggs here, did just about everything else.

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the main culprits

tent with a view		scroll to: top \| previous \| this \| next
tent with autumnal view ! 174 kB !	Had the house had more than a large open-plan upstairs and downstairs and a bathroom, I think I might have been offered a room for the duration of the job. As it was, Suzanne gave Evelyn and I complete freedom of the house and even her bed while she was away. I have such a strong objection to the waste of time and resources involved in commuting to work daily, that to begin with, I spent many nights in the tent in the photo as opposed to with Evelyn in her beautiful but one hour away studio in an orange grove. Sleeping in a tent is also a good way to wake up early and refreshed. Our first Macintosh computer was only purchased after the completion of the site works, so that did not keep me up at night until it came to writing the operating manual, from which you see some of my first graphic works on computers, here.

form and planning	scroll to: top \| previous \| this \| next
Suzanne did, of course, have an interest in the principle of the pool. The original liquid sketches were received with enthusiasm. But in my own enthusiasm to bring a project within my grasp, I once again gave it away. I barely made enough to cover the cost of my food and travel expenses for the duration of the job, and my beloved Leaf (Evelyn) with only the most token of grumblings, made up the shortfall and accommodated me in her studio when I was not too tired to drive there after work. The subcontracting of much of the actual construction work at a price eased things for me somewhat, though when my friendly subcontractors realised their price meant they were also going to be doing their last few weeks for the sake of seeing the exciting project though, their tolerance of my perfectionism also began to wane!		plan

the dancing digger

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dancing digger

The site was too cramped for a JCB-sized excavator to be able to manoeuvre or even gain access, so we hired this small but muscle packed skid-steer loader known as a Bobcat. Barely big enough for the operator to sit inside, it could still shift stones weighing half a tonne. This was the last job for our cheerful spanish operator, who had just completed his training to join the police. He clearly enjoyed pushing the machine to its limits, making it dance on two or even one of its four wheels as he swung great shovelfuls of earth around, weighing nearly as much as the machine. He claimed that the resultant lurchings and cavortings left him with a stiff neck verging on chronic whiplash. We managed the dig negotiating the many fruit trees dotted around the site with hardly any other damage.

the job robin		scroll to: top \| previous \| this \| next
brave (female) robin	If the job had to have a mascot, I would nominate our robin. She spent probably as much time on the site as me! Her favourite waiting place was on or near the big rock that features in the pool. This was often within a few feet of my surveying, pipe burying and cosmetic works or the men with their wholesale earthmovings. As soon as the tools were downed for a moment, she would investigate any ground we had disturbed. Her presence often lightened our hearts.

misty mountain block-work		scroll to: top \| previous \| this \| next
Sunrise and sunset illuminate these mountains beautifully, if you are lucky enough to have their rays reach you directly. This site was superb for receiving both, being south facing and at around 900 metres altitude. Yet with many overhanging trees to provide personal support against the weight of the midday summer sun, with its ability to crush flesh as well as the depth of landscape, it was the perfect location for me.
winter site sunrise - ! 175 kB !	Autumnal leaves glow against the dark north side of the misty Lujar mountain on the left. I often imagine time lapse photography sequences as I build something. The image to the right is two photos, superimposed, before and after a day's block-laying and a little site tidying, hence the ghostly blocks and tools....	ghost blocks ! 140 kB !

earth, wind and fire		scroll to: top \| previous \| this \| next
In the middle of this project, I found myself caught in another spectacular environmental disaster! Fire is often resorted to to "tidy" land here, sometimes in inappropriate conditions. So, though the disaster I had to accommodate during this pool was less contrived than the spray-plane of my first pool, or the river barrage and inappropriate hydro-electric schemes hanging over the third, to my way of thinking, it was the result of much the same indifference to la naturaleza - the natural environment. Since the story would take up too much of this page and is at least as memorable to me as the pool construction, and as worthy of description, I have put it on its own page. Click the image for the page.		an illustrated account

pondering....		scroll to: top \| previous \| this \| next
Neil and Trevor ! 166 kB !	The pond that was to accommodate the biology that was to keep the swimming pool water clean was begun after the walls of the main pool had been erected. We had directed our energies first to the main pool in trepidation of the effects of the arrival of rain on the precipitous and unshored sides of the excavation. However, almost no rain fell for the entire duration of the job. I tried unsuccessfully from both the points of view of getting the shape I wanted and of keeping my masonry operatives happy, to make myself let them get on with the bio-pond part of the job without my control, as they had built similar pools many times before. I am sure my viewpoint on the procedure was regarded as tedious beyond their remit. I think they had been looking forward to it as a relief from my relentless eye upon the pool form.

treatment		scroll to: top \| previous \| this \| next
The lack of rain was to become a different kind of problem more relevant to the biology of the pool. By the time we had finished the pond, the pool was almost finished too. The pond ecology was nowhere near established enough to win a battle with warm algal soup which had spent days or weeks stagnating in open tanks, delivered via earth ditches hardly used since the previous summer. Later that summer, this was what hit it! Short of a tanker, there was no other bulk water available to us - even for washing! The charcoal filter you see me loading here was one of at least six devices intended to keep the water clean. Its job was to absorb any taints I though might be added to the water by the organisms in the pond and prevent the mobile ones from straying into the following sand filter.		trev loading the charcoal filter

tubo grotto and valve city		scroll to: top \| previous \| this \| next
too many taps		The diagram on the left was one of my first attempts at computer graphics, in 1995, using one of those little programs that is supposed to do everything, and comes with the computer. Whilst still quite convincing, considering it was drawn on a very small 600 x 400 screen, I find it slightly amusing after seven years of exponential progress in computers. It shows a section, as if through the photo below, from left to right, but reversed as if looking mirrorwise at it. Here be an explanation of the tangle of pipes!

anatomy		scroll to: top \| previous \| this \| next
The photo of the pool site on the right reminds me of one of those anatomical diagrams of the human body with the skin - in this case grass, tiles and paving - removed to show the musculature. It is the only photo that I can find that shows all of the elements in the same frame. It was taken with a wide-angle lens from the high branches of a tree growing on the terrace above. Note the contrast between the forms of the house patio and the pond to the left, which I had no and little hand in, respectively, and the rest of the pool. Leaf is standing on what was to be the sunlight disinfection deck. In the final photo, it can be seen in the foreground with its carefully graded smooth surface constructed from slate. The small round opening between the pond and pool is the sand filter. The scrolling line with red tiles dotted along it is the lip of the waterfall, which may be seen from other angles in other photos.		leaf on deck

tile wallpaper		scroll to: top \| previous \| this \| next
tiling to the north...	It could almost be tile wallpaper, couldn't it, curving around the edges in the pictures? The two images sort-of join-up, although they are taken from different viewpoints. On the left, Neil grouting the red edge tiles, on the right, Andy getting 'em down. Andy is a tiler with a degree. This didn't help him get them down, but it did make for long and academic arguments on whether they should come up again! Come to think of it, I think Neil has a degree too...	...tiling to the east

stretchy steps	scroll to: top \| previous \| this \| next
If you look at the first pool I built, for Peter, you will see that though its step sides are curved, the risers take the shortest possible straight route from inside to outside. Removing those corners and straight lines in these steps changed them into something else! The lines and vertical perspective given by steps are essential to my more architectural forms. Note the intruding rock in these steps, intricately framed with the tiles. Though planned as sketches, the curves in this pool were all created by eye.	stretchy steps	It would be fallacious not to tell some of the things that went wrong during this project. The one explosion of the emotional powder keg between Suzanne and I that occurred while I was actually on the job was provoked by a young dog that she acquired... a big dog.... My response to being surprised by its excrement carefully placed in a different part of the pool every morning was to ask Suzanne to train it to do it somewhere else. This was obviously not the right thing to say, and certainly not with any trace of tension in the voice! I have blanked the response but it was enough that I put my most important tools in a bag and drove away.

water curtains	scroll to: top \| previous \| this \| next
Evelyn was off on her annual travels, or we'd have had it sorted out in no time. It came down to reasonable Neil, who by way of common family-and-baby culture had become much closer to Suzanne, to try and mediate after a week or so. We sorted it out, both backed down a bit, and the construction was finished.
We waited to be allowed irrigation water to fill the pool but could not get any. I had arranged to meet up in England with Evelyn for her birthday, so I left my phone number in case of problems and drove north for a break and to write the pool manual. I heard nothing from Suzanne until there came a typed letter the likes of which I have never received, before or since. It finally sunk in that in my eagerness to develop alternatives to chlorine for pool water treatment, in conjunction with building interesting organic structures, I had taken on a job with an inappropriate client. At that point, to avoid further acrimony, I let go of the job and about half of the small amount I would have had as wages after paying all the expenses, and left Suzanne with her undisclosed resources to sort it out in a way which was more suited to her.	curtain waterfall and encapsulated rock
When the rain eventually came, it came with a vengeance. Mountainsides turned to porridge and slid off to more comfortable locations. Suzanne's newly built patio slid down the mountain, and the house narrowly missed following it. Eventually the house was sold and she was heard of no more. I went back to have a discreet look at my work and was pleased to find it not only intact, but looking good, if sans its bio-pond and gravity filter, which had been filled it and covered with more crazy paving. I suspect the pool added far more to the value of the house than was ever paid for it, and I learned a lot in its building, so I suppose neither Suzanne nor I should grumble....

to more of this site or respond to it	(back) to the pools centrefold	this site ©2003 Trev Val dolphin generous copyright statement Page history: Original edition: 2002, April 15th This edition: 2002, August 19th
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