Indoor Pool Help Please

[louisiana]

I appreciate any and all insight you may be able to give...

I am a general contractor building a large poolhouse in Louisiana for a client. The pool will be indoors, and the interior of the building will be climate controlled.

Initially we were going to install a traditional chlorine system, but have been advised that an ionizer or ozonator would be a better fit due to all of the mechanical and electronic systems that will be inside the house(there are bedrooms, kitchen, living area, etc; all in some fashion open to the pool area).

Please give me any/all thoughts on water treatment system pros/cons, and any other advice or design issues that I may need to address. we are currently in the framing stage of the building, pool is in the ground.

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[JohnT]

Whether you have another system, you still need something that remains in the water that can kill viruses and bacteria. That limits you to chlorine, bromine or biguanide. An ionizer has very slow efficacy against bacteria and viruses, while an ozonator has good efficacy but doesn't leave any residual in the water. The residual sanitizer protects swimmers from pathogen transfer from other swimmers. Without it, you are essentially drinking each other's bath water.

You can't have a pool open to the rest of the house. Controlling humidity is difficult in a single pool room. It would be impossible with a connection to the house. Trying to cool the house below the pool water temperature would be a difficult thing to do as well. The house is going to tend to stay at the pool water temperature, and most people are going to want that in the 80s. Nobody is going to be happy in a humid 85 degree house.

 

[louisiana]

Thanks,

Do you think it is possible to segregate the pool environments using mechanical equipment to form air curtains?

 

[JohnT]

Thanks,

Do you think it is possible to segregate the pool environments using mechanical equipment to form air curtains?

I don't think that alone would do it. Air curtains prevent fast flow between areas, but they are still going to allow air mixing to occur. they are best for holding back flow while a door is open.

The heated water in the pool will put an enormous burden on the AC, similar to several furnaces running. No one would want to swim in the pool if the air temps around it are in the mid-70's. It will require significant air exchange in the pool area to control humidity. I can't see any situation where you don't want to have the two areas 100% separate.

 

[Isaac-1]

First off hello, and welcome, what part of the state are you in?

Climate control around an indoor pool is a nightmare, when my pool was first built 30+ years ago we had air conditioning and heating in the building, this lead to all sorts of condensation problems (raining from air conditioner vents in the summer, and when the pool water was heated in the winter everything that dropped below the dew point getting coated (windows, skylights, any exposed metal, etc.) in the winter certainly not something I would want connected to a living space.

As to chlorination issues, I have tried just about everything over the years except SWG which everyone seems to advise against due to corrosion concerns indoors, and am now happy with a liquid chlorine metering pump solution, I do currently use MPS non chlorine shock on occasion for additional oxidation to keep the CC levels down, and have a UV Ozonator I plan to connect in the near future to help with this matter more. Since switching to my current system and following the suggested levels taught on this board I have experienced no problems with "chlorine smell", etc around the pool.

Ike