How standardized pool design can ensure ease of access and maintenance

by jason_cramp | June 21, 2021 12:05 pm

By Phil Bach

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Movati Athletic Clubs are a Canadian chain of high-end athletic clubs with 17 locations in Canada and an 18^th venue opening soon in Edmonton, Alta. The 17^th club was built in 2020 in Windsor, Ont., and had a soft opening despite the pandemic. Like all Movati Clubs, the Windsor location offers an upscale 6503-m² (70,000-sf) facility, including two separate pools with two separate hot tubs.

For those joining a Movati Athletic Club, it feels like having a membership to six boutique studios and a premium fitness club, all under one roof. One of the most unique aspects of the club is it offers a women’s only section—a club within a club that has its own pool and hot tub.

Richard Deakin from Hollandia Pools worked with Movati to build the pools and hot tubs, in addition to configuring and installing the pool pump rooms in almost every Movati Athletic Club across Canada. According to Deakin, Hollandia and Movati worked together to create a consistent design for its pools and hot tubs across all its locations which adhere to all local health codes, have energy-efficient pump room equipment ensuring the highest water quality, and use a uniform layout across each facility for ease of maintenance.

A tale of two pools and two hot tubs

In each Movati facility, there is a co-ed family pool with an adjacent hot tub, as well as a women’s only pool with its own adjacent hot tub. In the Windsor facility, the co-ed family pool is 9.1 m (30 ft) wide by 20.7 m (68 ft) long with a 3 m (10 ft) by 3.6 m (12 ft) hot tub. The women’s only pool is 9.1 m wide by 18.2 m (60 ft) long with a 1.8 m (6 ft) by 2.4 m (8 ft) hot tub. Originally, Movati wanted to combine the hot tub to spill-over into the pool; however, Hollandia pointed out that, due to Canadian health codes, commercial pools and hot tubs cannot share water as their chemistry is different.

Once Movati landed on a design they liked and knew worked, they standardized the design across all their athletic facilities. In doing so, they have also been able to standardize equipment and layout. Deakin says the pool and hot tub design is straight-forward and clean using standard rectangular shapes. The hot tub is completely tiled, giving it a high-end, finished look. As with all commercial hot tubs in Canada, the height of the seats, number of jets, etc. are dictated by provincial health and building codes.

The pump room

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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.

Uniformity across locations

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Maintaining uniformity across all pools and hot tubs at the Movati Athletic Clubs has been central to the pump room design and choice of equipment. Movati wanted to give its maintenance staff the ability to work at any location, whether it be in Ontario or anywhere else in Canada. So, in addition to building the pools, choosing the equipment, and setting up the pump rooms, Hollandia was tasked with training the club’s maintenance staff to work on any pool mechanical room equipment that would be found at any one of the Movati locations.

“This way staff will see the same equipment and will know how to service everything regardless of which facility they are maintaining,” says Deakin.

“Having all pump room equipment be the same, with the same layout, allows any mechanical staff at any location or those travelling between locations to find the same equipment in identical locations, not only making it easier to service, but also easier when ordering and sharing parts.”

Growing and expanding

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Movati Athletic Clubs are thriving despite the pandemic. Deakin says he believes their success can be largely attributed to the quality put into everything they do. They have a proven product and strive for consistency and performance.

“Their product is very uniform and high-end with finishes that are second to none,” says Deakin. “We have been challenged by Movati, but they have never strayed away from Hollandia and we are proud to be their aquatic contractor and consultant.”

Hollandia currently has two additional Movati clubs on the books in which they will be building two pools and two hot tubs per facility. They also have five additional clubs slated to be installed in Western Canada over the next few years.

[5]Phil Bach is the senior sales manager for Pentair Aquatic Systems in eastern and central Canada. He has been working in the pool industry since 1978, starting as a pool service technician. Bach joined SwimQuip in 1988 and stayed with the company as it became Sta-Rite and then Pentair Water Pool and Spa. He can be reached via email at phil.bach@pentair.com[6].

Source URL: https://www.poolspamarketing.com/trade/features/case-studies/how-standardized-pool-design-can-ensure-ease-of-access-and-maintenance/

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