GRE wooden pool - Safran...a dream about to be shattered
Hello pool lovers,
I appeal to all people of good will in this forum, and if they are good connoisseurs of wooden swimming pools let it be!
My husband and I, in our villa in Nicolosi (Italy) a town a few kilometers from the wonderful volcano Etna, realized in the summer of 2023 our little-big dream of installing a swimming pool. In particular, our choice, based on the economic resources at our disposal went to the Safran 790089 model, in wood, produced by the Spanish company Gre.
Seeing it assembled (strictly on a concrete platform that we had to have built) was a magical moment for us because it allowed us to spend, no matter if with family or with the company of friends, wonderful days (and even evenings, on the hottest days), in the name of light-heartedness with the background of good music and memorable barbecues seasoned with sangria or cocktails.
To our immense regret, however, the following summer (2024) we notice how the pool, on the south side, presents a bulge at the bottom, as if the water (23 cubic meters in total) is pushing with its weight to want to breach first the liner (0.75 mm thick) and then the structure. As you can see from the photos, some (thankfully minor) parts have failed. In mid-September 2024, we called some “experts” one in wood (a carpenter), the other in pools (maintenance man but with little experience in wooden pools, otherwise very good) and they presented us with a depressing picture: “your pool will collapse soon, you'd better disassemble it and maybe replace it with a cast iron structure to be lined with PVC. Granted that 4 months later the pool is still there, without any aggravation of its situation (we drained it slightly, slightly below the skimmer level) and believing that the guys we contacted were looking for (Dang them) “the deal of the year” at our expense, we would like to understand where the truth lies. Whether it is true that the pool may give way (in perhaps a much slower time frame than the “weeks” the engineers were projecting) and whether there is an alternative solution to the sad and painful dismantling. Maybe plant steel buttresses in the weakened part, who knows. Or do you propose something else to fix it as best as possible? I would be really grateful if you would respond. Imagine how the loss of the pool will also mean the loss (serious economic damage aside), for next summer, of so many days of genuine joy for us and our children for the foreseeable future.
Thank you!
Marilena
Hello pool lovers,
I appeal to all people of good will in this forum, and if they are good connoisseurs of wooden swimming pools let it be!
My husband and I, in our villa in Nicolosi (Italy) a town a few kilometers from the wonderful volcano Etna, realized in the summer of 2023 our little-big dream of installing a swimming pool. In particular, our choice, based on the economic resources at our disposal went to the Safran 790089 model, in wood, produced by the Spanish company Gre.
Seeing it assembled (strictly on a concrete platform that we had to have built) was a magical moment for us because it allowed us to spend, no matter if with family or with the company of friends, wonderful days (and even evenings, on the hottest days), in the name of light-heartedness with the background of good music and memorable barbecues seasoned with sangria or cocktails.
To our immense regret, however, the following summer (2024) we notice how the pool, on the south side, presents a bulge at the bottom, as if the water (23 cubic meters in total) is pushing with its weight to want to breach first the liner (0.75 mm thick) and then the structure. As you can see from the photos, some (thankfully minor) parts have failed. In mid-September 2024, we called some “experts” one in wood (a carpenter), the other in pools (maintenance man but with little experience in wooden pools, otherwise very good) and they presented us with a depressing picture: “your pool will collapse soon, you'd better disassemble it and maybe replace it with a cast iron structure to be lined with PVC. Granted that 4 months later the pool is still there, without any aggravation of its situation (we drained it slightly, slightly below the skimmer level) and believing that the guys we contacted were looking for (Dang them) “the deal of the year” at our expense, we would like to understand where the truth lies. Whether it is true that the pool may give way (in perhaps a much slower time frame than the “weeks” the engineers were projecting) and whether there is an alternative solution to the sad and painful dismantling. Maybe plant steel buttresses in the weakened part, who knows. Or do you propose something else to fix it as best as possible? I would be really grateful if you would respond. Imagine how the loss of the pool will also mean the loss (serious economic damage aside), for next summer, of so many days of genuine joy for us and our children for the foreseeable future.
Thank you!
Marilena
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