The swimming pool - CLOSED

Published 01:00 on 15 Sep 2023

Although it is blowing a hooley and pouring with rain as I write, hopefully many of you will have enjoyed the pool during the recent burst of late summer weather. What you may not have noticed, due to the efficiency of the new solar panels, is that the gas fired boiler failed in the first week of September and hasn't been working since. The solar panels have however managed to keep the pool water to a 'swimmable' 25-26 degrees.

Unfortunately, the part of the boiler that has failed is not only expensive but also requires a lot of labour to fit, the parts are also not available until mid-November. Due to this exceptional delay we have been offered a significant discount on a brand new energy efficient boiler complete with 2 year warranty at not much more cost. The General Committee have subsequently agreed to go ahead with this proposal and this will be fitted over the winter months and commissioned in time for the swimming season next year. I should point out that this failure is entirely coincidental and has absolutely nothing to do with the installation of the solar panels earlier this year.

Needless to say, this means we are now relying on the solar panels alone to heat the pool up until the planned closure on Saturday 30 September. As such we are very much at the mercy of the elements in terms of the retained temperature of the pool. In order to keep as much of this precious heat in as possible, it is even more important than ever that we ask all users to put the cover back as soon as possible after they exit the pool.

Whilst we wouldn't plan to switch the boiler off to conduct this sort of experiment it will be interesting to see how well the solar panels keep on top of the demand at this time of year.

Happy swimming.

Tim Keeping

Vice Commodore