The pump room
Hollandia Pools also helped design a pump room for these four bodies of water with the most energy-efficient, eco-friendly equipment.
“We have recommended and specified the pools and hot tubs be equipped with variable-speed pumps (VSPs) to ensure the required turnover rates are met without using an excessive amount of power,” says Deakin. “We set these pumps and drives to maintain the designed (required) flow rates of these pools and hot tubs for 24/7 operation.”
Deakin also used VSPs on the hot tubs based on the turnover rate required for the volume of water. Each of the two hot tubs has its own VSP. Based on their size, Deakin used a 5-horsepower (hp) pump on each pool with a separate variable frequency drive (VFD) to regulate pump speed ensuring they operate as energy efficient as possible. By doing so, it helps reduce the operating cost of each pool.
“The bigger, 5 hp pump is required on the pool to achieve the turnover rates required by code for Class B commercial pools—which is a turnover rate of once every six hours,” says Deakin. “This means the pump needs to move 757 litres per minute (lpm) (200 gallons per minute [gpm])…Since the filters on the pool are rated for around 454.2 lpm (120 gpm), we installed two filters on each pool to achieve the desired filtration turnover rate.”
Hollandia combined the use of chemical controllers, sand filters, and an ultraviolet (UV) light sanitizing system to ensure the best water quality while complying with local health codes. At the Movati pools in Windsor, Hollandia needed to comply with Ontario’s drain-down and auto-fill code requirement (every Class A or B pool or hot tub in the province must drain water to waste and replace 15 L (4 gal) of water per day per bather. To do so, automatic controllers with pre-programmed auto drain downs and auto fills were installed.
“Ontario requires pools to be drained down 15 L of water per bather per day to meet code,” explains Deakin. “In fact, bathers must buzz in and out of the pools and we set the drain down rates based on historical data (garnered from the number of entries into the pool) then from the projected daily use set up a manual drain down valve to waste water at a fixed rate. The auto-fill system automatically kicks in to replace this water as requires.”
Because of this code requirement, Hollandia also recommended the use of sand filters.
“In fact, with the drain down and replacement requirement, when backwashing the sand filter the pool operator is killing two birds with one stone,” says Deakin, explaining this system was put into place partially to lighten the load on Movati’s staff.
“Sand filters are the best option for these pools and hot tubs as they are easier to maintain, with a simple backwash once a week or so, depending on the bather loads,” says Deakin. “Sand filter cleaning is fast and easy as staff can do it quite rapidly, while other filter media options take more time to disassemble and clean, which is not conducive to a commercial facility as it can be labour intensive.”
As a result, two sand filters are used uniformly across all the pools at Movati Athletic Clubs to achieve the required filter flow rate of 833 lpm (220 gpm). The UV systems serve as a secondary sanitation system in the pools and are used to control chloramines, which not only improves water quality, but also the indoor air quality (IAQ) inside these facilities. This is in addition to each facility being equipped with a high-efficiency air-handling system to negate the buildup of any potential humidity.
