The pool is heated.
Here is exactly how much.
Every villa in Portugal says heated pool. Almost none says to what temperature, on what schedule, or what happens in the house when the wind comes off the Atlantic. This page does.
The pool: 25.5 to 28 degrees, and a ceiling we won't lift
The pool is enclosed and heated by a heat pump on a daily timer — eight hours as standard, extended to twelve when a group wants it warmer. It holds between 25.5°C and 28°C. Tell us at booking that the pool matters to you and we set the timer for your dates rather than leaving it on the default.
People sometimes ask us to push it past 28, and the answer is no. Above that, warm water stops holding chlorine properly and starts favouring the things chlorine is there to prevent. Twenty-eight is bath-adjacent already. It is a ceiling with a reason, not a setting we forgot to change.
The one honest catch: during a summer heat wave we turn the heating off entirely. A group in August once found the pool cooler than they expected for exactly this reason. In winter, when you actually want it, it runs.
There is a retractable cover, which is how the heat survives the night. It takes two people about a minute, and closing it on the last morning is the one thing we ask of departing guests.
The house: gas radiators, and the knob everybody misses
The main level runs on gas-boiler radiators controlled by a smart thermostat — the black controller by the fridge. Upstairs has its own electric units. The lower apartment uses portable heaters. A winter interior sits around 20°C, which is a normal warm house rather than a tropical one.
Here is the thing that actually causes cold rooms, and it is never the boiler: each radiator has its own knob, and it has to be open. A closed knob means a cold room in an otherwise warm house. It takes about twenty minutes from cold to comfortable once the knobs are open.
We can turn the heating on from an app, and we do — including from another country, before you land, so the house is warm when you walk in. If a room still isn't warming up, message us and you will get a photograph of the exact knob with a circle drawn round it. This has happened enough times that we have the photo ready.
What winter here is actually like
It is not the Mediterranean and we won't pretend it is. It is an Atlantic winter: mild, bright between the fronts, and windier than the summer photographs suggest. Our guests from Manchester find it warm and say so. Guests from Miami bring a jumper.
What changes is that everything else empties out. Sintra in January is a different place — the palaces without the queue. Óbidos does its whole walled-town thing in the cold and does it better. The beach walkway seven minutes away is yours. And the villa itself finally gets used the way it was built to be used: the fireplace lit, the long table full, the cinema room actually watched rather than walked past.
For a team, that is the argument. A November offsite has the whole coast to itself, the workspace is quiet, and nobody is quietly wishing they were at the beach instead of in the session.
- Pool 25.5–28°C, heat pump on an 8-hour timer, extendable to 12. Never above 28, for a chemical reason.
- Retractable cover keeps the heat overnight.
- Gas radiators on the main level, electric upstairs, ~20°C indoors. Open the radiator knobs.
- We switch the heating on remotely before you arrive.
- Heating is deliberately off during summer heat waves.
- Winter is when Sintra, Óbidos and the fireplace are at their best.