Charlie Dimmock and the Chinese pool

Here at Harviglass, we have a long and successful history of providing GRP. Not ones to rest on our laurels though our website largely focuses on what we are working on today. That said though, We thought it might be fun to use the blog to bring you a few articles from the archives.  This article comes from 2000.  When our products are featured on Television.

Glass Fibre Pool

Harviglass was selected by BBC Television for Charlie Dimmock‘s TV series, ‘Charlie’s Garden Army’. The company was asked to create a glass fibre pool 8.5 meters (30ft) long, that would become the focal point of a Chinese garden. Charlie set out to design an ethnic garden from what was a pretty bleak central courtyard of an apartment block for the elderly Chinese people in the centre of Manchester’s Chinatown.

Restricted access to the courtyard meant that the pool had to be created on-site. It was constructed by direct application of glass fibre laminate to a specially designed substrate of polyurethane foam and specially treated timber. Our expert GRP moulding team were on hand in the background to make sure the whole operation went smoothly.

Making sure the project was delivered on time was as important as the BBC’s filming schedule had to be adhered to, but Manchester’s well-earned notoriety for rain twice delayed the job. The surfaces to be lined with GRP needed to be completely dry.

At the third attempt, the work was completed inside the producer’s schedule and was filmed in detail as work progressed. Harviglass personnel went on to assist with gardening and building tasks under the direction of Charlie, who strangely, had little difficulty in finding willing volunteers from among the men!

As a company with a long-standing tradition of problem-solving in difficult situations, Harviglass was proud to be selected by the BBC for this project. As our usual work is in high-quality bespoke mouldings for the automotive, architectural safety, shopfitting, retail, medical and scientific industries, this project was a challenge but also a welcome break.   Charlie Dimmock was a delight to work with and the company hopes the pool and garden will give years of peaceful pleasure to the residents in Manchester’s Chinatown.

Do you need a bespoke Pool building?  Our GRP moulding experts can help.