It’s fall in Tuscany and the views are even more beautiful at Borgo Santolina. I wish I was there but I’m back in Oregon so we will have to live vicariously through Dan & Roxanne’s photos.
We submitted our retrospective planning application for Villa renovations back in May and they have been grinding through Italian bureaucracy. We hired a builder, finished the renovation plans with our architect but until we receive the stamp of approval from the municipality we’re stuck waiting. The good news is we were able able to start renovating the pool last week. As an outdoor structure it falls under different rules which allowed us to break ground last week.
Jack hammering up the old pool decking and draining the pool to remove the liner
All clean and ready for pool shell repair work
Because not everything should be easy or make sense, we had complexities to sort through with the pool project. Because we only bought the real estate and not the prior business we need to apply for a new pool permit instead of being grandfathered in. This requires us to comply with the latest regulations which have changed quite a bit since the pool was built 25 years ago.
Some make sense like adding safety features to prevent swimmers from getting sucked into the drains and that pool water must be filtered every 3 hours. But we also have to build a extra wall in the pool so that we have 50% of the edges allowing water to “flow over”. We already have an infinity edge but apparently we need 2 infinity edges in Tuscany.
To achieve the water filtration requirement, we must replace all the pool equipment - pumps, valves, filters, dispensers, feeders etc. This is a bummer as this equipment had been replaced not to long ago and is in good condition. The upside is we’re gonna have really clean water.
We are also replacing the pool liner and adding a winter cover. Liner’s are standard in Europe and slowly making their way to the US. It took us a while to give up our idea of using natural stone inside the pool, but after seeing the cost and learning about the maintenance and other potential issues, replacing the liner was the best choice. They come in many designs and we chose “Prestige” - here is an example:
Other improvements include a new pathway to the pool with travertine pavers, enlarging the pool deck and replacing old terracotta tiles with travertine stone tiles and a new outdoor shower. We’re also replacing the loungers and other outdoor furniture and building a large shaded pergola with seating and a bar at one end of the pool. Since we’re tearing out the liner and doing other masonry work, we decided to add a “Baja shelf”, new integrated steps and swim lane for our lap swimming guests. The shelf will look something like this:
In other news, we’re full speed ahead on improving the farming operations. We hired an agriculture company to prepare and plant 1 hectare (2.5 acres) of lavender down by the river in the old cow pasture. We have opted to be a biologico (organic) farm, so this comes with some additional requirements but we should have lavender in the ground shortly.
It’s also olive harvest time. We have Leccino, Moraiolo, and Frantoio olive varieties. Next week Angelo and Marco will start harvesting the olives and pressing oil in exchange for a portion of the product. We’ll report back how it tastes!
That’s it for now.
