An old friend just told me this story that I had to share with all of you pool geeks.
He just built an 80 foot diameter by 20 foot deep above ground pool indoors on an existing 10 inch slab of concrete. It took them 32 days to build the pool and 8 days to balance the chemistry. It was used for 5 days and took another 3 days to demolish and remove it. It had two 50 hp and one 150 hp filtration pumps. Total cost was about $480k.
The pool was made of welded steel sheets anchored to the floor with steel flanges. The steel plating was 5/8 inch thick at the bottom and graduated to 5/16 at the top. It had two 2x12 foot x2 inch thick acrylic viewing windows. The joint at the base of the wall was sealed with some type of mastic and the floor and walls were painted with some type of coating that could not withstand exposure to chlorine so they used bromine.
The biggest snafu of the whole project was balancing the water chemistry. They contracted with a local commercial pool service company to have this done and after 5 days of cloudy water and actors complaining about burning eyes, they brought in their own experts. They discovered that the test kits used by the service company to test the bromine were completely inaccurate at the upper levels and what the company thought was 10ppm was actually closer to 50ppm and there was no nuetralizer available. They also found that the calcium(chloride) was only 20 and the aggressive water was oxidizing the steel adding to the cloudy condition. After raising the chloride level to 200 the water snapped into shape in two days.
note to the Chem Geeks, The chemical reporting of the story could be somewhat flawed but this is how it was told to me.
He just built an 80 foot diameter by 20 foot deep above ground pool indoors on an existing 10 inch slab of concrete. It took them 32 days to build the pool and 8 days to balance the chemistry. It was used for 5 days and took another 3 days to demolish and remove it. It had two 50 hp and one 150 hp filtration pumps. Total cost was about $480k.
The pool was made of welded steel sheets anchored to the floor with steel flanges. The steel plating was 5/8 inch thick at the bottom and graduated to 5/16 at the top. It had two 2x12 foot x2 inch thick acrylic viewing windows. The joint at the base of the wall was sealed with some type of mastic and the floor and walls were painted with some type of coating that could not withstand exposure to chlorine so they used bromine.
The biggest snafu of the whole project was balancing the water chemistry. They contracted with a local commercial pool service company to have this done and after 5 days of cloudy water and actors complaining about burning eyes, they brought in their own experts. They discovered that the test kits used by the service company to test the bromine were completely inaccurate at the upper levels and what the company thought was 10ppm was actually closer to 50ppm and there was no nuetralizer available. They also found that the calcium(chloride) was only 20 and the aggressive water was oxidizing the steel adding to the cloudy condition. After raising the chloride level to 200 the water snapped into shape in two days.
note to the Chem Geeks, The chemical reporting of the story could be somewhat flawed but this is how it was told to me.
