I know! A scene we thought we may never see. This is an actual excavator digging the hole for our actual swimming pool.
In a bid to accelerate construction work in Italy post-lockdown the government passed legislation that basically said if you have had a construction permit request outstanding for more than 18 months, you can give 60 days notice that you are going to begin the work unless you hear from the comuné with any objections. We did all that but nothing seemed to happen. When the 60 days were up our geometra went to sign the letter that said we were due to start and sure enough it all went through.
On the 4th May, as pictures bear witness here, digging began which means we hope to start having paying visitors in Genista in July/August. And being solar heated visitors can come right through October and enjoy a heated pool.
On a slightly les savoury note, law dictates that a new environmentally friendly septic tank has to be installed as a result of the swimming pool work. Consequently, as you can see from the picture here, another big hole has been dug at a safe distance from the pool and a new tank installed. We haven’t inspected the work yet but we are desperately hoping that we don’t have to move any of the olive trees to accommodate this new installation. There’s a long way to go but having waited two and a half years for this when it should have been ready to start in October 2019, we were seriously bemused as to what was going on at the Comune. Was there something they weren’t telling us? Is there a problem that hadn’t been identified when the previous owner got his permit? All this stuff goes through your head and you begin to wonder if you’ll ever come out the other side. We will probably never know but right now it is onwards and upwards.