New House New Pool (or new to us at least!)

[peekay]

Hello

I wonder if you can help me, I am from england and have just moved into a new house with an indoor pool...Some background...

We recently purchased a house which we are currently renovating/improving. There is an indoor swimming pool in the house, the building surrounding the pool is made of an oak frame (barn style) and all woodwork is exposed in a vaulted ceiling effect.

In between the oak beams there are pine panels to create a complete wood effect. The pool itself seems to have all the necessary pumps etc and there is an air conditioning unit called 'enviroswim' located in the pump room. However over the last 8 years the house has barely been lived in and as such the pool/pool room hasn't been used much. From what we can tell the pool was 'turned off' about 18 months ago and hasn't been used since.

The pumps still run, filtering water but it hasn't been heated and the climate control hasn't been used. The result is that the all the woodwork has developed a kind of greeny white spotted fungus all over it. I am assuming this has been caused by the lack of ventilation. It is over all the wood,most noticeably the pine and it is starting to spread onto the oak now.

My questions really are;

- Is this 'fungus' dangerous?

- What is the best way to remove it?

- Once removed, will it come back?



I am not sure if I have given you too much or too little information, but any help you could give me would be really appreciated. I have never 'managed' a pool before so this is all totally new territory!



Many thanks



Paul

 

[JasonLion]

I can't help you with the fungus. I suggest you get a specialist to take a look at it. Some kinds of fungus are harmless and others can cause serious breathing problems.

An indoor pool will tend to drive the humidity to 100%. You need the dehumidification system running all the time to keep that under control. Very few materials are safe in a 100% humidity environment. Wood will have problems with humidity, which can sometimes be much more serious than the fungus. You should have the wooden structural elements checked.

 

[peekay]

hello guys and ty jason

had a couple of guys come over to assess situation - all from business pages and they all want to fix it!!! Of course! Long and short is situation has to be resolved, air circulator turned back on to help situation but in short term we are going to drain pool (it is a concrete pool) to hopefully eliminate all water from the area, dry pool roomout and then start again. which poses another question where do we empty the pool? My estimations make it approx 22000 gallons and we do not hyave mains sewerage. We run on septic tanks! So...we have boreholes and soakaways but they couldn't deal with that quantity of water! Neighbour said that they simply pump out onto garden, long run off and slopes away from house? is this ok? also we run on bromine as opposed to chlorine? does this matter? would it have more of an adverse effect than chlorine on surrounding grounds?
thanks again