Fredrico the Frog

We recently had a visitor to the pool. You can see him just under the basket handle sitting next to the ‘Lilly Pad’ of a chlorine tablet. We think he moved into the pool as the recent dry weather has dried up the local small pools and lakes.
We had to rescue him from the pool as the chlorine content in the pool would have eventually killed him.We eventually trapped him with a net and put him into a spare empty tub.
And here is is waiting transportation to a water course about 2kms away.

Solar boat

We have been on a number of day trips recently. One of which took us on a trip on a Solar powered Boat.

The trip on the boat was only an hour and was part of the overall day trip. The boat took us around the great reservoir that services Benidorm and was not exciting but quite and picturesque.

The boat itself held about 60 people and was totally powered by the solar panels you can see on the top picture.

  I tried to get the details of the output of the solar panels in this picture, however, as you can see I failed. According to Mr Fixit, who was with us that day, each panel was pushing out enough electricity to power a good sized kettle and as they were over 50 panels on the boat more than enough power for the boat.

Talking to the boat keeper it did work on non cloudy days, however, on rainy overcast days it struggled a bit. But lucky for him not many rainy days in Spain.

Return from the UK

We flew in from the UK despite the grumblings of the volcano in Iceland and we brought the Lady of the Villa’s mother and sister with us.
The M-in-L is not as handy on her feet as she used to be so we had the airport provide us with help and a wheelchair. The flight was no problem and we got to the villa early evening. to find:

• Pool had leaked – ye Gods!
• The satellite TV not working
• The cleaner not done her work as we had parked the car so far up the drive she could not open the security gate
• The garden had gone crazy as only Spanish gardens can and it looked like we had been away for 6 months!

Still it was good to be home and I am sure we can overcome all these problems over the coming weeks

The Drains

We had invited some people over for dinner last Saturday night and I had decided to cook a series of Curries with all the “trimmings”. No real issue with the food I had started to cook on the Thursday, some on the Friday and finish off on the Saturday.
During the Saturday I decided I needed more chicken so off to the supermarket I went, as I descended the stairs to the road level I caught a whiff of drains but ignored it. On the way back to the villa entrance I again caught a bad smell. Again I ignored it.
As I was busy “cheffing” as The Lady of the Villa calls it she went off on a tour of her garden to se how things were there. She had only been gone ten minutes when she called to me in the kitchen, “We have a problem!”.  My only problem was getting the Korma to the right consistency, so what was wrong?
Just below the steps to the road level a whole “pond” of effluent had appeared (no photographs to save the reader throwing up). Our drains were blocked and it was 5pm on a Saturday afternoon. we had no rods, no way of unblocking and the smell was… well you can imagine and as the washing machine and dishwasher were on the pool was getting bigger. Off went all the machines. Diving for a copy of the “yellow pages” I managed to get a company to come out on “Emergency” (it was a Saturday they explained).
They arrived an hour later and left 30 minutes later 150 euros richer the pool gone and the air smelling sweeter. Our guests never noticed a thing!

The Leaking Pool – Part 2 – Fixing the Leaks

Having found that the autofill was leaking how to fix them was the next problem for Mr. Fixit.
To describe how the leaks occurred and how they were fixed needs a description of the autofill, so here goes. Consider the autofill to be a bucket with a controlling ball cock, not unlike a toilet tank. The water comes in at the top and goes out at the bottom through sealed entrance and exit and the water controlled by a floating ball cock that keeps the water level in the autofill and pool exact.
The leak on the pool side had been caused by a piece of concrete being lodged in egress pipe. This had been noticed by the installers but instead of getting it out they drilled another hole through the top of the pipe, unfortunately, they also drove it through the bottom. However, it only leaked a little, hardly noticeable in the overall evaporation that takes place in hot weather.
On the inlet side, they had not allowed for any movement of the soil and had only just by a couple of turns joined the inlet pipe to the autofill. so over a couple of years the soil around the pool moved causing the inlet pipe to leak more and more and this leak causing more erosion until it the outlet pipe started leaking more and more. Now as this was under water this caused the pool to leak but then it auto filled causing more erosion and more leakage. Only when we stopped auto filling did the cycle stop.

To correct the poolside leak Mr Fixit removed the blockage and inserted another smaller pipe in the hole. He then created a false bottom in the autofill tank and pushed the pipe through. Finally he sealed the false bottom and the pipe to make them watertight.

This was the connection through the autofill tank.
A further L shaped connection at the left hand end went into the pipe in the concrete.


The Inlet leak was fixed by taking out a tile at the side of the pool and excavating through the concrete until all the pipe was exposed. Then by taking all the individual bits off he found that there was not enough of one of the connecting pipes connecting to another pipe. He refurbished what he could, bought some parts and an extension. Over one or two hours he carefully fitted everything back together and ensured a watertight fit. It was nearly over.
The addition of an extension caused a problem, the ball cock float did not fit, but cutting a piece off (it was made of polystyrene) he mad it fit. This, however, caused the ball cock to not float correctly. He found another piece of (polystyrene) and fitted this and hey Presto it all worked. Replacing all the excavated concrete with sand and a broken tile and the job was a good ‘un.
From this point it just need filling in.

Thanks Mr. Fixit.

The Leaking Pool - Part 1 - Finding the Leak

As you may recall we have been having pool problems were the pool leaked from time to time. Over the last two months this had happened so regular that we had stopped filling the pool to see what happened. It had eventually stopped leaking, just under all of the possible ‘leak areas’.
The pool is tiled and if any of the tiling had broken it would have stopped there, however, we also have other possible ‘exits’, skimmers (which move the water towards the filter exits), the filter exits themselves and the autofill.

We checked all the tiles above the waterline and found no problems, the assumption was: as the water had stopped no tiles below the waterline were leaking. It must be one of the ‘exits’.
As luck would have it our friends and business partners from Crewe where coming over for a visit. Mr. A likes his projects and challengers and being an all round Mr. Fixit  he wanted to investigate and fix.
Her had only been over a day or so when he decided, early one morning to seal all the exits and by opening them up one by one identify the leak. Here he is in the pool (which believe me was very very cold) doing the sealing.

The water was clean and blue, what you cant see is how blue Mr. Fixit is!
By a process of elimination and trial end error a few days later he had found not one but two leaks, both in the same area. It was the autofill. A low pressure leak on the pool side and a high pressure leak on the land side.

Looks OK from here but the installers (5 years ago) had made two errors that over time had caused our pool too leak and cost us about 250 euros in excess water charges.

The Pool still leaks!

We thought we had found our leaking pools' problem. We were wrong! We filled the pool up on Sunday and by Monday morning as we were leaving the villa we noticed it had lost the water we had put in!
We have decided to leave it for a few days until, yet again, the loss stops. At this point it can only be something above the waterline.
But what?

p.s. The lady of the Villa (who was the Stupid Pool Girl) is smiling! 

Pool Leak Rectified

The leaking pool has been rectified.

Although I had called out a specialist pool firm, they never responded and I am still waiting. However, the Lady of the Villa (who for the duration of this blog will be called Stupid Pool Girl) and I investigated.

We found that the pool leaked but we could not find anywhere around the house were water had collected or left a trail. We opened up the pool equipment box (see photo) and discovered that the Stupid Pool Girl when she cleaned the pool last (which was just before we left for the UK in December) had left the Fondo (or Drain) tap partially open. The tap is the second on the left.

We closed it and waited another 24 hours. The leak had stopped. We now await our next water bill hoping it is less than the 200 Euros the Stupid Pool Girl has estimated it has cost!

The leaking Pool

---- were the water usually is

---- after 24hours of leakage (and its a big pool)

We had been away from Spain for the whole of December and only got back on the 1st January. We had been in the UK all of that time, doing family things and other ex work-related tasks. We were both glad to get back.

Things looked perfectly normal, however, The Lady of the Villa checked the electricity meter (hardly moved) as we had switched everything off bar the alarms and the fridge. The water meter was a different thing it had registered that we used 4.5 cubic meters of water per day while we were away. How? nothing was left on and there were no leaks in the house.

The meter was still going round after we checked everything in the house, that left the pool. Sure enough the auto fill on the pool was going. Again Why as the weather was not hot enough to evaporate the water. We closed down the auto fill and waited a day.

As expected the pool level dropped (see photo). This meant that while we were away the pool, which, is buried in the ground, had sprung a leak (where the water was going I don't know) and had been auto filling.

The total cost over 200 euros to be found in our next bill.

I have called out some pool people to find the leak. Hope they get here soon before the pool empties.