Sous le sol de Port Grimaud

Under the ground in Port Grimaud :

François SPOERRY did not want visible electric or telephone wires, nor television aerials on the roofs, which are only external signs of modernity that make the landscape ugly and disturb the simple pleasure of the eyes...

Gas, water, electricity and telephone supply :

In PORT GRIMAUD, even the birds had to adapt. Without electric wires to land on, they had to fall back on the halyards and ropes of the sailing boats !

Rejecting any outward sign of modernity, electricity was distributed through buried cables to technical cabinets located in the gable of each group of houses. But very quickly, individual meters were installed in each house.

For television, the housing estate was equipped from the outset with a centralised system: 2 collective antennas placed on the car park at the entrance to the village pick up the channels which they redistribute via an underground cable to the receivers placed in each house and flat. Amplifiers had to be installed on this wiring throughout the village to improve the signal.

The telephone network follows the same underground path. In 1966, François SPOERRY graciously made available to the "Postes et Télécommunications" a plot of land on which was built, according to the plans of the Architect, which gives it its rather "administrative" aspect, a central office serving the whole region. Port Grimaud can nowadays enjoy very good Internet coverage.

Gas distribution is also done through underground pipes connecting each house or flat to large storage tanks, placed next to the entrance car park.

Sanitation :

       These various networks and pipes, to which the distribution of drinking water had to be added, were integrated into the architecture of the bridges in order to supply the various islands.

       The problem arose for sanitation and the return of sewage and waste water from the village to the outside.
       The architect had to use a collective system of a very advanced technology for the time, including lifting pumps to cross the different bridges, for each district, with discharge to a water treatment plant placed at the bottom of the outside car park, along the Saint Pons stream.

       This plant operated according to a total oxidation process, with the clean effluent being discharged into the sea via a 300m long outfall to a depth of 8m. Unfortunately, this plant had great difficulty in cleaning the discharged water properly during the summer.

       It was removed in 1995 after the Port Grimaud sewage system was connected to the commune's modernised network, with a relay placed at the foot of the interchange spanning the N98.