Challenge
The Bay & Basin Aquatic Centre serves the population of nearby towns, Huskisson and Vincentia which are located between Sydney and Canberra. It features a separate indoor 25 m lap pool and leisure pool with water slide and spas in a modern building nestled in a beautiful bushland setting typical for Australia. As is common in indoor pools of this kind, using sand filtration and liquid chlorine sterilisation, the combined chlorine levels built up over time and became resilient to any attempt to remove them.
Bathers noticed the strong chlorine smell in the indoor pool environment at times, brought about by the often high combined chlorine levels, and the concerned operators decided to take steps to ensure that their Aquatic Centre fully satisfied it's customers.
Solution
After visiting several similar centres around the State and acting on professional advice the Council decided to invest in a high tech solution from Europe – installing two state-of-the-art Barrier® M UV disinfection systems. With their polychromatic high performance lamps the Barrier M specifically targets combined chlorines and dramatically reduces their presence in even the most heavily loaded pools, whilst improving disinfection.
Results
Immediately after commissioning – after 12 hours – the combined chlorine levels were approximately halved (to around 0.8 mg/l) in both pools and staff could already detect a reduction in the chlorine odour in the pool hall. After one week the combined chlorine concentration dropped considerably, and over the following months the levels in both pools settled down at around the 0.0 – 0.2 mg/l range – even with varying bathing loads.