Dear Swimming Pool Buyer in France

I am a professional civil engineer and have spent 6 years on an unrelenting learning curve, gaining the cutting edge knowledge required to become a leading operator in the French swimming pool industry.

Read the full story below of how our team developed the ARConWall swimming pools in France using the French designed system of concrete filled polystyrene blocks.

The water is kept in the pool by an ultra modern high technology PVC liner with an infinite number of colours, patterns and freizes that you can choose.

It is kept sparklingly clean and healthy by a hi-tech fully automatic filtration and water treatment system also made in France.

Every size, shape and depth of pool is easy to install at very economic costs and remember - It will still be there providing great pleasure for your childrens children - Because the structure will last for ever.

What is a PolyBloK Swimming Pool?

We use hollow polystyrene blocks for the walls, filled with concrete that is reinforced by high tensile steel bars with waterproofing by a modern high technology, very durable, very attractive French made PVC liner.

The blocks look like this Click on thumbnail to enlarge

Ready to fill with concrete Click on thumbnail to enlarge

This is How PolyBloK Swimming Pools are built

Construction Sequence (1) Excavate hole (2) Build wall foundation and insert vertical bar reinforcment (3) Erect polyblocks (4) Fill polyblocks with concrete (5) Poke connection bars through polystyrene (6) Remove polystyrene on outside of pool wall over 150 mm depth (7) Backfill around pool (8) Cast ARconWall slabs (9) Level out floor with concrete (10) Screed pool floor (11) Install pool liner (12) Fill pool, install plant and commission (13) Shape ground around pool

Installation Period

Installation takes between 5 and 7 weeks, depending on pool size and the equipment and area of paving around the pool that is required.

Video on PolybloK swimming pools in France

you can watch a 12 Minute Information Packed Video that gives a quick overview of PolyBloK pools and the method of installation:-

Short Video About "Swimming Pools in France"

The Bluepools Story

My name is Will Witt and I have an honours degree in Civil & Structural Engineering from Sheffield University in 1966 - I know that puts me in my early sixties - but I am very fit and active - you have to be to build swimming pools!

I became a Chartered Civil Engineer (M.I.C.E) in 1974 and was also a Chartered Structural Engineer (M.I.Struct.E) for about 25 years.

The Way we Work

We installed pools ourselves as Bluepools SARL from 2004 until earlier this year in 2009.

We now operate under a Franchise system where we design the pools, specify the equipment and organise the pool contracts for independent pool installers like Pools 17 – the pool installation company that works with  us in Departments 16, 17 and 24. All the Pools 17 installers were trained by us as previous employees – including Bill Potter the Director of Pools 17.

As soon as you have signed the Contract we work for you and make sure that your pool is built properly in every respect. You will see in detail how this works if you decide to move forward with us.

From a pool buyers point of view this has a lot of advantages:-

If you have any queries about how this works just drop me an Email.

Objective

Our objective is to develop Bluepools into the premier swimming pool company in France with licensed installers operating in every Department in France.

We always specify and ensure that all our pools incorporate the best pool equipment available in France from the leading French pool equipment suppliers Procopi and APF (Annonay Productions France) - simply because it is best suited to Fench conditions.

How did Bluepools come about?

I got interested in pools when I was working in Oz in Darwin in the Northern Territory

I had been working in the oil business for KBR (owned by Halliburton and yes I have actually met Dick Cheney) from the early 1990's. and spent most of 2001 in Darwin, Australia working on a massive off-shore gas project.

There were lots of new houses and swimming pools being being built in Darwin at the time and being naturally nosy I had a really good look at every swimming pool project that I saw - and there were hundreds!

In Australia, at that time, most of the pools were constructed with water-proof concrete or made from fibre-glass - and I came to the conclusion that there had to be a better way of building swimming pools because each concrete pool seemed to take about 6 months to build and the fibreglass pools just looked awful!!

Move to France in 2002

When I got back to the UK - my wife and I decided to move over to France so that I could start building swimming pools there - specialising in providing pools for English residents. We moved with our two daughters - who were 8 and 11 at the time in September 2002. (We also thought that they would be better off in French schools - and they have been!)

Research into Pool Types

Before I went to France I talked to Polypool in the UK about installing their PVC liner pool kits in France and then did some basic research into PVC liner pools and discovered that they were often used to waterproof concrete pools as well.

I particularly liked the basic concept where the pool structure stops the sides of the pool from collapsing and the PVC liner keeps the water in - and Polypool came on very strong about how quick their pools were to build.

Anyway to cut a long story short I decided to give the Polypool system a try.

The PolyPool Experiment

As an experiment I built 2 swimming pools in France in 2004 using the modular panel pool kits supplied by Polypool.

These are about the most expensive panel pool kits available in the UK or Europe! and consist of dense polystyrene panels that are held in alignment by steel channels at the top and bottom of the pool walls.

Lots of concrete and pea gravel is required to backfill behind the panels and stabilise them, before filling the pool with water. The top rail is held in position by a piece of steel angle that is hammered into the ground and tied back to the angle with a bit of screwed rod.

I did not find these pools easy to build, and on both, one of the longer walls moved into the pool by about 100 mm after I backfilled behind the walls. The backfilling was carried out exactly as recommended by Polypool. I had to beef up the anchors on both pools using a few tons of concrete to keep the walls in alignment during re-backfilling operations!

It was patently obvious that these pool walls are only stable when the pool is full of water and that if the pool needs to be emptied for any reason it is likely to collapse. AND SUCH POOLS ARE ONLY EVER GUARANTEED AGAINST MANUFACTURING DEFECTS - NOT STRUCTURAL COLLAPSE CAUSED BY BAD GROUND CONDITIONS OR HIGH GROUND WATER LEVELS!!!!

We were determined to install pools with an unequivocal guarantee against structural collapse so we had to find another system.

Fibreglass Pools

We looked into the fibreglass pool option and soon decided that they were even worse than Polypools.

It did not take much research to find out that fibreglass pools not only collapse but they can also shoot up out of the ground as well - in a process that is delightfully known as "Popping" in the United States - where they are very common.

To be fair Fibreglass pools are probably OK if:-

We believe that it is virtually impossible to be certain that French sites have low water tables all year round simply because it takes time for the water to sink down through the limestone rock. And so when it rains hard the water build up rapidly in the soil layers over the rock - that covers just about all of south west France.

Concrete block and PVC liner pools

We then examined the other options on the market and decided to try the concrete block and PVC liner system that many artisans use. We built two pools using this method - one in very good ground and the other in very unstable ground.

The pool structures worked well under both good and bad ground conditions - this is a picture of the bad ground conditions pool during construction - Just click on it to enlarge - they don't get much worse than this - and it was only the third one that we built!

Click on the thumbnail to enlarge

We finished the pool as shown in the following link and the Client was, and still is, very pleased with the finished product.

Click on the thumbnail to enlarge

There were several construction drawbacks however:

The interior walls of the pool needed to be finished by rendering with sand and cement. This is a very weather sensitive process - it cannot be done if it is too wet, too frosty or too hot.

The 3 stage process - screed rails, scratch coat and finish extended the pool construction programme by 2 weeks.

It was also very difficult to produce a very flat finish to the top of the walls so that the liner lock was level - this extended the programme by a few more days.

So the system can produce a good product that is not sensitive to poor ground conditions - but it takes far too long and is very weather dependent!!

This is the approach that many artisan pool installers follow and is one of the reasons why they always take so long to build a swimming pool.

We needed a system where we could tell our Pool Buyers when our Installation Team would be on site and how long their pool would take - So it was back to the drawing board!

Reinforced Concrete filled Polystyrene Block pools

So then we looked at how some of the big French pool chains were building their pools and discovered reinforced concrete filled polystyrene block pool walls! - we both immediately thought Yes!

The first pool that we built using these was a great success because it was quick and easy to build, the pool water was clearly a lot warmer in the mornings and the pools walls felt and looked very good.

It was a Euraka moment for us!!

We were entirely sold and from that moment on until now we only build PolyBloK Pools – as we now call them.

However we also realised that the polystyrene block walls were not enough on their own because of the very poor ground conditions that cause paving subsidence around pools that is so often seen in France and we were also worried about Ice Loading.

Ice Loading

We wanted to make the structure of our pools as robust as possible and certainly robust enough to withstand the highest ice loadings that might be exerted on the walls in a very severe winter. I remember the winters from the 1960's and I think we are in a cycle where they will return - global warming or not!!

It is a basic fact that the vast majority of pools in France - and I mean well over 90% - have never had 100mm of ice cover on the pool. So most modular panel pools and fibreglass pools are going to be completely knackered if we have temperatures below zero for two or three weeks.

Are you confident enough - from all the pontification by scientists that severe winters are behind us - to spend 30 or 40 k without a guarantee from your pool installer that your pool will not collapse under ice loading?

If you are - "You're a better man than I am Gunga Din" (Rudyard Kipling 1892).

Greek and Roman Steps

Greek pool entry steps are the ones that are rectangular  on plan and Roman steps are semi-circular – I’ll bet you did’nt know that!

The structure of these Steps is also very important because if these move or deteriorate visually the pool will lose all its Value as an Investment.

Initially we installed Fibreglass Roman Steps but it soon became apparent that these were not satisfactory for several reasons including:-

It was obvious that the use of fibreglass steps was incompatible with our desire to provide unequivacol safety and structural guarantees. So we abandoned their use in favour of PVC liner covered steps with non-slip treads.

These have been very successful and have massively improved the appearance of our pools.

The use of fibreglass steps is a sure sign that a pool builder is an amateur - as we were when we started!

The ARConWall System

Most French pool builders just build the pool and do not concern themselves with the the backfilled ground between the pool walls and the edge of the excavation for the pool.

And around every pool there is also a wedge of sub-soil that has been weakened by the excavation for the pool and that continues to be weakend by rain water getting into the backfilled ground around the pool.

When the paving is installed around the pool it subsides as the ground around the pool settles. There is absolutely nothing that can be done about this in Modular Panel Pools like Polypool or Fibreglass pools because they are not designed to take the weight of any concrete bearing down on them.

However the reinforced concrete filled polystyrene block pool walls can accept the weight from a concrete slab. To take maximum advantage from this we provide special steel reinforcement to connect the concrete slab to the top of the pool walls - including around the Roman Steps.

The concrete slabs do three things:-

They span over the backfilled ground and the sub-soil that has been weakened by the excavation for the pool thus avoiding the traditional subsidence alongside the pool walls and provide a solid foundation for paving slabs.

They stop rainwater from getting into the backfilled gap between pool wall and the excavation edge and then continuing to soften the surrounding soil.

They rigidly hold the top of the pool walls in position thus providing absolute certainty that the pool walls will not collapse under ice loading.

We call this structural system the "ARConWall System" an ancronym from "Anchored Reinforced Concrete Wall" . Every one of our pools is completely surrounded by these ARConWall slabs. Under severe ice loading some damage may occur to the polystyrene but this will be simple to repair with exterior grade filler and would not even require pool emptying.

Links To French Swimming Pool Installers on Web

At the bottom of this page you will find links to the websites of the main French polystyrene block pool suppliers as well as most of the other big pool installation firms.

By following the links you will be able to contact any of the hundreds of local branches and franchisees that are listed on their websites.

Please Compare PolyBlok Pools with the Rest

We are giving you all this information so that you can compare Bluepools PolyBloK pools with all the other options that are available. PolyBlok Pools are water proofed with a PVC liner and provide an immensely strong, very durable insulated pool that can be installed in every conceivable shape, size and situation.

PVC Liner Information

Our PVC liners, come with a 10 year guarantee and are very easy to keep looking fresh and clean. They also feel very pleasant to touch and stand on. Click on this link to download a pdf file with full details PVC Liner Colour, Print and Freize Options

Not only do PVC liners ensure that PolyBlok pools don't leak but they look fantastic as you will see if you look at some of the pools that we have built - just click on a thumbnail below to get the picture..

Case studies

Testimonials

We can provide a testimonial from every client that we have built a pool for - but contacting them is sometimes difficult when we want to arrange a visit. We admit that while most of the projects went very well and the clients were delighted, we did have quite a few problems in 2007 caused primarily by the very wet spring and summer that severely delayed our pool construction programme.

But even the clients that were badly effected were understanding and were satisfied that we did everything in our power to overcome the difficulties.

Sixth Year of Business in France

This is my Seventh year of business in south west France and I am determined to ensure that Bluepools is regarded as the first stop for the design and installation of quality swimming pools in France.

Links to the French Polystyrene block pool supply companies

The PolyBlock Pool Companies in the following table all supply polystyrene blocks for swimming pool installation. Many of the websites will give you links to the installers that use their products.

Links to the Other French Pool Supply, Distribution and Installation Companies

The French Pool Companies in the following table all supply various types of pool kits, structural systems and waterproofing methods for swimming pool installation in France. Many of the websites will give you links to the installers that use their products.

We hope that the pool installer lists above prove to you that we are only acting in your best interests and that we genuinely want you to get the pool of your dreams installed without the project turning into a nightmare.

Best Regards from

PS We only have the capacity to install a very small percentage of the pools bought by British and Irish pool buyers in 2009/2010 but we are pleased to provide all this information in the hope that it eases every pool buyers path to happy pool ownership.

PPS If you want to download the Estimate Tool and the 10 Tips Ebook just fill in your email address at the top of this page and you will also get our weekly newsletter that is packed with useful pool buying information.

Bluepools

The only swimming pool business in France owned and managed by a Professional Civil Engineer

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