Swimmers will be better able to see where they’re swimming once Fountain Park pool reopens after its annual spit-and-polish, say city staffers.
Fountain Park Recreation Centre shut its doors last Saturday for its annual two-week spruce-up session.
City of St. Albert aquatics services manager Shaun Percival said the city typically does a major clean-up of Fountain Park around this time of year as it’s when the pool has the least visitors – summer swim programs are over, and fall school ones have yet to start.
All those sweaty people in a pool puts wear and tear on its floors and filters, Percival explained. While they wash the decks and flush the drains daily, you have to empty the pools entirely to really scrub out all the bacteria.
“Our job is to make sure this pool can last another 42 years,” he said of the 41-year-old facility.
Percival said about 16 city workers were on site at Fountain Park this week using power washers, floor polishers, and a special cleaning solution to clean catch basins and scrub deck and pool tiles. The catch basins are probably the grossest part of the job, as they are what catch all the dropped jewellery and hair in the pool.
“They’ll fish out some pretty gunky garbage,” he said, adding that catch-basin water does not re-circulate through the pool.
Percival said crews drain and clean each pool at Fountain Park every two years – this year, they’re doing the hot tub, tots pool and leisure pool. It takes up to six days to refill a pool once it’s drained.
“That’s a large body of water,” he explained, and you also have to heat it and restore its water chemistry.
The shutdown also gives crews time to do other upgrades to Fountain Park, said city recreation facilities manager Kelly McConnell. This year, that includes a major renovation to the staff change room, fixes to the water slide, new floor decals around the tots pool, fresh paint for the meeting rooms, and new, brighter LED lights over the competition pool.
“That area gets more sunlight but is still darker than this area,” Percival said, comparing the competition and tots pools, “and it’s purely because of the lights that are down there.”
Dog swim
The Grosvenor Outdoor Pool and Woodlands Water Play Park will close for the season on Sept. 2.
As it has since 2012, the city is hosting a Dog Swim at the pool on that day. Anyone who donates cash or a pet-related item to the Second Chance Animal Rescue Society will get to have their dog swim in the pool between 6 and 8 p.m.
“It’s a way to bring people together in the community,” Percival said, and they close the pool for cleaning the next day anyway. (They also turn off the water circulation to keep the dog hair out of the filters.)
Crews will empty the pool into the sewer system and then spend about a week scrubbing it, Percival said. Once they lock up all the equipment and put antifreeze in the pipes, the pool goes into hibernation until the spring, when it gets cleaned again. The Woodlands splash park goes through a similar process.
Percival said city residents could help keep their local pools clean by showering with soap and water before they dive in.
“The more we can get off our bodies before we get in, the better it will be.”
Fountain Park members will have free access to Grosvenor Pool, the Woodlands splash park, and the Servus Place pool while Fountain Park is closed. Fountain Park reopens Sept. 9.
