Hopefully by this time next week we will be out of quarantine! I still don’t know if it will end on Saturday or Sunday…… A lovely hot day today. We were up quite early to start our jobs.

I think I forgot to mention yesterday that one of Bob’s jobs was to get a ladder and climb down into the “ballast tank” or pool overflow tank. This is a concretet hole in the ground that holds about 5 tonne of water and it comes into use when our main pool is on overflow mode and it tops it up as required. Overflow mode is when the water in the pool rises right up and overflows the edge into a trough that runs around it. The water then runs around the trough and back into the ballast tank and then through the filters and back into the pool. Inevitably as this process runs on, water is lost to evaporation or to the trough and hence the need to topup. It’s a popular mode to run as it looks quite glamourous and also it means that insects and other debris that drop on the surface of the pool are carried off without the need to “skim” with a net. We can also run the pool in “recirculate” mode which is a more conventional mode where the water in the pool is just recirculated through the filters and back to the pool through vents, and the pool remains level but does not overflow. So… sorry about that little lecture on pool design 🙂 anyway, Bob went down the hole to clean out some debris on the bottom and to make sure the ballcock valve was closing properly. It was.

Today, we had let the ballast tank fill up again and then we put the pool on overflow. It worked fine and we were pleased. Then later, when we turned it off, we noticed that the pool had dropped slightly and the ballast tank was filling up. This should never happen (other than from the mains which were closed by the ballcock) so, the only explanation is that the non return valve to the tank is sticking open and will need replacing. It’s not a difficult job and hopefully Rick can do it or Bob can once we are out of quarantine. Having a swimming pool is like a black art, believe you me. You will soon learn more about physics, water piping, valves, chemicals and the like than you ever wished to know. Still….. it was fabulous on such a hot day to be able to get in a few times.

Bob has also started work on repairing our teak pool loungers. 4 of them have been damaged over the past year by guests allowing their kids (of all ages) to jump on them I would think. 2 backs need to be repaired and several of the legs/wheels. Then he will restain and they’ll be good to go. We have to buy two new ones this year. We have 4 teak ones, 2 painted Adirondack loungers and we had about 6 white plastic style ones. The white plastic ones have all disappeared except for 2 which are very broken and dumped on our wood pile. To be honest, last year we accepted two local bookings and I won’t unfortunately do that again. In both instances, a booking for 6 or 8 people turned into a mega event. On one occasion there were 60 cars parked outside our house and up the hill – all the family came from all over the island. I don’t object in principal but I do object to damage, beer bottles in the pool, glasses smashed etc. Never again.

Ran the watering lines again and got the watering tank filling up and sorted out the hoses so that all tanks can be fed together. We also tested all the a/c units and took one to bits and cleaned out the filters, which needed doing.

This afternoon we had a lovely catchup chat through the hedge with our neighbours, Alan and Lesley (our partners in the partitioning of the plot). One part of the hedge between the garden has gone a bit “thin” so we had chairs one side of that under the tree and they had chairs down a level on the other side under an umbrella. Really good to catch up and hopefully we can all have dinner once we are free. They go up to the quiz at Hoots up in Ilgaz village and we like that. Lesley has also started going to a yoga class up there that sounded fantastic, very professionally taught, but not intimidating.

We had a good video call with Daisy – lovely to see her face. The internet is behaving very well now. Bob watched the F1 grand prix live on his Ipad and I sat on the terrace with my book and a g&t and enjoyed the warm breeze and the view down to the sea. Listened to Fleetwood Mac, “Tango in the Night” and burned Omani Frankincense in my burner…. love that smoke….. Tonight I made a veggie dinner of green lentils, fab fresh mushrooms and peas. After dinner Bob got the light over the table by the pool working. Such a lovely middle eastern style lamp. We love it. I am so lucky to have such a handy chap!

We caught up with Homeland on Netflix.