Swimming Pool Restoration

During the height of the Covid pandemic we received an instruction from a Building Surveying company and a local Council with an unusual project. A wet swimming pool!

The swimming pool floor tiles had been removed prior to our initial visit exposing the sand and cement screed below. The tiles in the pool were continually becoming loose when the swimming pools were operational. High levels of corrosion were noticed around the pool areas and over many years there was a loss of water levels from the pools.

We had further identified that the tanking in place for the gutter surrounding all the pools and water storage tank had been insufficiently laid and had broken down over many years allowing water to penetrate the structure.

After building repair works were carried out by contractors we re-attended site and agreed on and installed an appropriate drying regime. For this project an Indirect heat drying solution would be the most cost effective and efficient drying system.

Indirect fired heaters safely remove the harmful exhaust gases from the process air so that the system is delivering hot, dry, clean and fresh air into the drying chamber. In this case we utilised huge tents to ensure we were concentrating our efforts on just the saturated swimming pool areas.

The indirect-fired heaters provide a cost-effective drying solution for large property claims. These units range from 20kW, comparable with a domestic central heating system, through to 225kW which would heat a large industrial unit. The heaters are powered by diesel or kerosene and can be an invaluable tool when power availability is limited on site. The desired temperature is controlled by a digital thermostat that connects directly to the heater’s control system, always making sure we safely dry the affected materials within the parameters set by our experienced technicians.

Clean and dry external air is drawn into the equipment, heated up and distributed throughout the drying chambers in the property. Increasing the ambient air temperature reduces relative humidity and allows the air to hold a greater capacity of moisture, and the increased energy in the hot air increases the rate of evaporation in the wet materials. As the moisture evaporates, the moistureladen air is flushed from the environment using high-pressure ventilators that can be controlled using remote switches, humidity-controlled power supplies, or a simple heat/exhaust drying configuration.

This particular drying system is ideal for large areas such as shops, schools, leisure centres, large warehouse & factory units, where the volume of conventional equipment required would not be cost-effective to install, monitor or run on a daily basis.

The Council and Building surveying company were extremely happy with excellent findings from our initial moisture survey, the choice of this drying system and how we managed this challenging project from start to finish. All of this carried out during the peak of the covid pandemic