CANMORE – Canmorites looking to take a dip, or do their regular aquacise class, may have to wait a little longer while the municipality works to solve a mechanical issue at Elevation Place’s aquatic centre.
The pool has been closed since Jan. 14 and the Town of Canmore said it's working hard to restore it, but not at the cost of its patrons' health.
“Running mechanical systems is easily one of the most complicated responsibilities of the facilities department and we’ve been encountering some mechanical challenges in the aquatic centre of Elevation Place,” said Stephen Hanus, manager of facilities for the Town.
“It’s been ongoing particularly since around the new year where our staff are noticing air quality issues, so we took note of that. We were very concerned because it led to some health concerns with respiratory and with eye irritation.”
Hanus said the situation is an unusual one as mechanical issues like these usually occur in extreme cold temperatures, but this particular issue began before local temperatures hit -30 C.
“Usually our system has to function the hardest during coldest temperatures or extreme temperatures – too hot or too cold,” said Hanus.
“Mechanically our system appeared to be functioning well when we observed our building maintenance management system, but when we did that deeper investigation we encountered a failed mechanical component that was deeply buried and undetected in our system.
"We proceeded to replace that component and make some further adjustments to the system. Things were looking reasonably optimistic for reopening, and things deteriorated one evening during the cold – even after we fixed what we thought was the root cause of the issues.”
Hanus said since that time they’ve engaged the original engineer team, the contracted service operator that oversees the maintenance of the system, and pool water quality specialists as well.
“We’ve engaged a number of specialists to help us work through this issue,” he said, adding that since that time they’ve done a number of adjustments to the system and found that 'it’s behaving unreliably.' "
“It’s not functioning the way it ought to, so we’ve decided to further lengthen the closure to further investigate. On Monday, we engaged an air quality specialist and conducted an eight-hour air quality test, and as well, we did a number of different scenarios to get a variety of data to simulate occupancy in the aquatic area. We’ll get results later this week and revisit the closure at that time, but we want to ensure the safety of our occupants, first and foremost, and regain confidence in our system.”
With mechanical systems being the most complicated part of any similar facility, Hanus explained that in an aquatic environment, the team is dealing with aquatic system, which involve chemical chemistry such as chlorine, and the air handling system.
“They’re two separate systems [air and aquatic] that work together to create an optimal environment. There’s a very narrow range of optimal environment for water temperature and chemistry, as well as air temperature, humidity, and circulation, also the off-gassing from the chemicals we release in the pool to keep it safe,” explained Hanus.
“The chemicals in the pool react with organics, chemical reactions do occur and they do off gas, those translated to what’s called chloramines. To this point we are unaware of any mechanism to actually test for chloramines in the air, so through further investigation, and what we believe is fairly new technology, we were able to get the air quality specialists in on Monday … So this is what we were needing to assess to determine the health of the actual environment.”
This test will provide the Town with more definitive data on air quality in the facility.
Jim Younker, manager of recreation for the Town, said keeping the facility closed indefinitely is to ensure the problem is solved.
“We really want to make sure this problem is solved for good,” said Younker.
Younker and Hanus explained the complexity of the systems and maintaining air quality, while managing chemicals and humidity. The system requires adjustments every day to be within the aforementioned narrow range of optimal environment.
“We have roughly 520 people a day coming through just the aquatics facility, so that has an impact on how the systems operate and our ability to adjust,” said Younker.
Younker and Hanus explained their team is working hard to open up the pool as soon as they can, but they want to do so when it’s safe for patrons. Younker said those with Splash and Go Beyond memberships have the option to put their membership on hold, which would extend the end of their membership. Splash members will also have the option to use the fitness part of Elevation Place, such as bikes, in the interim.
“We’d like to extend our appreciation for the patience in the community, we know how popular the facility is and the desire for everybody to get back to their favourite aquatic facility in the community and we are prioritizing the safety of everybody in the space and we are hoping to get to a resolution here shortly,” said Hanus.
An update is expected for Friday (Jan. 24) as well as an anticipated re-opening date. Visit https://canmore.ca/elevationplace for more updates on Elevation Place’s aquatic centre.
