Pool maintenance update

The pool is a great feature of Willsmere and a very important community asset. Last summer was difficult as there were a number of issues due to the age of the pool. Our Facility Manager, Jay, OC Manager, Krissy, and the CoM have been working with some pool engineers to develop options to minimise any trouble this summer.

Below is an excerpt from the scope of works.  The new contractor will provide the following:

• A service agreement that includes installation of a larger chlorine generator to lower chemical costs;
• Draining the pool, full pressure testing of pipes, sonic location of broken piping, repairing with flexible unions to ensure any further pool movement doesn’t effect piping that has been repaired;
• Optional repainting of pool interior;
• Refilling and commissioning of the pool and associated plant
• Installation of remote monitoring to assist in compliance of all health codes and allow staff to ensure the pool is safe to use at all times;
• Removal of bulk tanks to avoid decanting/tipping/pouring or backup chemicals to come straight out of 15lt carboys for far safer practices for staff.

This is our highest spec system for OC pools, and runs autonomously with minimum management intervention. I believe these modifications will bring a fundamental change to the way this pool operates and will most certainly bring a reduction in operation costs from chemicals and sheer manpower that is currently being expended to maintain water quality, not to mention a reduction
in unsafe practices to both the chemicals handling and the OC’s duty of care exposure to patrons using the facility.

We have also approved to have the pool painted while the water is drained as draining is one of the higher costs in painting a pool interior. The remote monitoring functions of the new equipment are very interesting and we plan to work with the engineers to see if there is a way we can have some basic status information embedded on the Willsmere web site, such as temperature, quality, etc.

Due to the specialised nature of this work, there will be a period of no activity while the equipment is manufactured, then we hope ther will be a lot of activity to complete these works. The pool will need to be closed for this time, but the engineer is confident we will be runnign again before summer.