Pools, terraces and renovations in Torrevieja

What we usually build in Torrevieja

Torrevieja is home ground for ORIGEN: our base is in Los Balcones, on the hillside above the pink salt lake. Most of the town's housing went up between the early 1990s and the late 2000s, when the population grew four times over, so a typical job is a villa or bungalow that is twenty or thirty years old, on a plot of a few hundred square metres, with a garden that has never quite worked. On the villa plots of Los Balcones, Los Altos, La Siesta and El Chaparral we fit a reinforced concrete pool of 6×3 or 7×3.5, sometimes 8×4 where the plot allows, with a porcelain or travertine terrace around it laid to fall away from the house. On the back-to-back townhouses and bungalow rows of San Luis, Aguas Nuevas and La Torreta the plot is tighter, so it is more often a compact pool or a plunge pool, a shaded pergola, an outdoor shower and a low-water garden. In Punta Prima and around La Mata we also take on full renovations of older villas and bungalows, kitchen and bathrooms inside while the garden is dug outside.

Getting it licensed with the Ayuntamiento de Torrevieja

Building a pool or extending a terrace in Torrevieja needs a permit from the Ayuntamiento de Torrevieja, handled by its Department of Urbanism on Calle Maldonado. The town hall decides from the scope whether that is a declaración responsable, an obra menor or a full obra mayor with a project signed by a qualified technician. ORIGEN prepares the drawings, the description of the works and the technical report, files it through the town hall's electronic office and answers any request for corrections. You receive a copy of everything filed and of the licence. Timing is up to the town hall, and we start digging only once it is granted.

Ground, salt and sun in Torrevieja

Most inland plots in Torrevieja are red clay and silt under a hard calcareous crust, which slows the first day's digging. Near the coast, at Punta Prima, Cabo Cervera and Los Locos, it is shelly limestone, and towards La Mata and the lagoon edges the ground turns to dune sand and soft silt that we compact properly under the shell. The wind is a mild easterly sea breeze, but salt from the sea and the salinas is everywhere, so we use stainless fittings and marine-grade coatings. Summers reach 35 degrees, so terraces get a pale, cool-underfoot finish. In the pedestrianised streets of San Luis or El Chaparral a mini-excavator and conveyor get in where a truck cannot.

Los Balcones, La Siesta, El Chaparral, Aguas Nuevas, Torreta