Charlie Dimmock and the Chinese pool?
| Harviglass were recently selected by BBC Television
for Charlie Dimmock's TV series, 'Charlie's Garden Army'. The company
was asked to create a glassfibre 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 in the
centre of Manchester's China Town. |
|
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.
|
|
Time was important to meet the BBC's filming schedule, but Manchester's
well earned notoriety for rain twice delayed the job. It was
vital that the surfaces to be lined with GRP were completely
dry. This situation produced some humorous exchanges between
Charlie and John Hargreaves, managing director of Harviglass.
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 their more usual work is in high
quality 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.
|
|
