Swimming Pool Technologies_Are These the Answer

One of the biggest challenges we’re facing today, especially for indoor pools, is combined chlorine or chloramines.. So what we’re expecting to see, and we know that there is some resear

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the presentation Swimming Pool Technologies: Are These the Answer?

To ask questions about this presentation, please join the presenter in the Networking Lounge at the designated time listed on the Agenda

I would now like to introduce Kevin Post, principal and Studio Director at Counsilman-Hunsaker

Thank you, and welcome, everyone, to Swimming Pool Technologies, Are These the Answer?

I want to start by giving just a brief background about why I developed this presentation And as a

consultant and as a past pool operator, I always found that I was learning new information about new products, new trends from the person who was trying to sell me that And so of course they’re always going to tell you honest information, but they’re also always telling you honest information about the good They’re not always telling you about the challenges you may face or maybe some of the bad side So this presentation was put together to be a nonbiased approach to looking at different trends in the industry as well as new equipment that’s available, and just giving my personal opinion as well as the opinions of operators and other professionals in the industry that I’ve talked to

So I want to make it clear that while we may present some specific products and pieces of equipment, we don’t represent – I personally don’t represent – any of these They’re really just meant to be my

nonbiased approach, nonbiased opinion about what I’ve seen

So in the session today we’re going to talk about why we continually see advancement in pool technology

as well as the trends Then we’re going to go into some of those technologies looking at things that we see in the pool systems, mechanical systems What we’ve seen from the competitive swimming side Trends that we’re seeing in the recreational swimming side We’ll end with some of the technologies in the wellness swimming And also just a little talk on natural pools because that’s been a hot topic in recent months

So we talk about why we need continual advancement You know, we have to recognize that while pools are fun and exciting and provide so many benefits, they are hazardous We have both physical,

microbiological, as well as chemical hazards all available at swimming pools

When we look at the physical hazards, the most common, the most recent one that everyone’s familiar with is our entrapments So thanks to the Virginia Graeme Baker Act we now have legislation in place to help minimize and prevent those entrapments in swimming pools However, prior to that we knew that there were 80 reports of entrapments resulting in serious injury And of those about 74% really were resulting from children under the age of 14 So while the Virginia Graeme Baker Act really only applies to commercial pools, we know that it is a good start and making sure that it makes its way down across the entire industry

The other thing that we’re becoming more and more aware of is the spread of RWIs, or Recreational Water Illnesses And these are illnesses, whether it’s bacteria, viruses, protozoa, that can be spread through pools, through other recreational waters And of course we know how to prevent them, we have means to prevent them, but we need to stay on top of it And obviously looking at new and better ways to stay on top of it is (inaudible)

And the last issue, we looked chemicals One of the biggest challenges we’re facing today, especially for indoor pools, is combined chlorine or chloramines A recent study from the Health Council showed that 17% of bathers urinate in swimming pools Of course, not all are quite as obvious as the young man in the video, so we actually believe that that number is probably much higher when you take into account people that won’t admit to it

Additionally, in the United States 83% of bathers do not shower before swimming Where we go into Europe, it’s pretty much a common acceptance that everyone is going to shower before getting in They view it as a bathtub, and they don’t want to be swimming in everyone else’s bath water where in the

States we view it and say hey, there’s chlorine in the water so we’re good, we’ll let the chlorine take care

of that And as we do more and more research, we’re realizing that that is really not true and really probably one of the biggest challenges that we’re facing

So what are some of the solutions that we’ve seen to help solve those problems?

One of the biggest areas of advancements over the past five to ten years has been in filtration The biggest area has obviously been in the incorporation and use of regenerative media filtration

Regenerative media filters have been around for a long time, but they’ve really become prevalent

probably in the past five to ten years And in today’s world, I would say that every new project at least has the discussion whether regenerative media filters are appropriate Now the biggest challenge is the cost associated with that

So what we’re expecting to see, and we know that there is some research going on, is enhancing the use

of high rate sand filters and basically trying to keep up with the benefits of regenerative media but maybe

on a lower cost One of the things that we’re looking at is the air assisting backwash This is actually old technology that was used back with gravity fan beds You would inject air along with the water to help agitate the sand The goal would be to see – you need about 20% of the water used today in a traditional high rate sand filter with air assisted backwash

The area that regenerative media filters have a big benefit is their ability to remove a very fine particulate Obviously this is done through the filtration medium so there is research going on about can we use a sand filter with a different type of media and get similar reduction And some of those may include

flocculent additives that help improve what the pathogens the filter can remove

And even with regenerative media where it’s probably the leading trend in filtration today, we’re still seeing continual advancements there, obviously trying to enhance the technologies, improving

efficiencies with filtration, as well as understanding better the media that we’re using and maybe getting better filtration with better media

And, of course, the ultimate goal is to try to make these filters more cost effective so that they can

become the standard across the board

Another area in filtration that we’ve seen, and this is relatively new to the pool market, it’s actually come from the fish hatchery market So if you imagine a fish hatchery, there’s a lot of organic, inorganic waste being produced, and it’s on a regular basis, and trying to keep that clean and keep those fish healthy so they survive is critically important So these drumfilters are used in fish hatcheries, and the reason is a traditional filter would get clogged so rapidly, just so quickly, that it just wouldn’t make sense You’d be backwashing sand filters, you’d be backwashing regenerative media, it just didn’t make sense

So with the drumfilter, it actually rotates the drum every 15 minutes, and it will actually go through a backwash expelling everything that it has collected every 15 minute Whereas when we think about our traditional sand filters, you know, we may go several days, weeks, or in low-use pools maybe even months without a backwash And that means all of the skin cells, all of the inorganics that have been grabbed by the filter end up sitting there, reacting with the chlorine, for several days, weeks, or months With a drumfilter it’s expelled every 15 minutes and before a lot of those reactions can even happen it’s put out to waste

Another nice thing about these is it’s not a recommended change in your typical filtration, it’s actually an enhancement So this filter could go pre to your existing filter, basically be a pre-filter and then you would

go through your traditional sand filter or your regenerative media filter where you would still see,

obviously, extended filter cycles, and they wouldn’t load up quite as quickly So there’s still a big benefit there No change required to what you’re currently doing to certainly have some great advancement in cleaning out that backwash and stopping the formation of chloramines before they ever happen

Another trend that we’ve seen over the past couple of years is the use of Sphagnum Moss in swimming pools Several years ago I had the opportunity to meet Dr Knighton, and he shared the story of how he decided to bring Sphagnum Moss into the pool market And it was really interesting He was reading an article about World War I veterans, and depending on how their wounds were treated had very different outcomes in terms of the likelihood of having basically an infection And what it was was some of the soldiers would use the Sphagnum Moss to treat their wounds Some of them were using traditional cotton What is found over and over again was that the individuals who used the Sphagnum Moss had a

significantly less likelihood of getting any type of infection And it was really attributed to that the

Sphagnum Moss must have some sort of antimicrobial activity happening

So Dr Knighton started to explore how this could work within swimming pools And what he found was that essentially it works like a tea bag where it absorbs some of the bad things that are floating around in the pool and also excretes some other chemicals that help primarily with biofilm is what we’ve seen Again, so with all this information, we have seen that it’s very expensive And so of the facilities that I’ve talked to, I seem to get about a 50-50 result Fifty percent of them love it I know we worked with the city

of Denver and they use it for all their indoor pools Another community that we’ve worked with in Texas tried it out for about a year, said yeah, they saw a lot of benefits but it just wasn’t worth the cost

So I’ve seen that about 50-50 A lot of that is hearsay But I followed up with a group who did a little bit of scientific research And I’ll credit – this is the Foothills Recreation in Colorado And their City Council is very strict in terms of spending money, and they want to make sure they have some sort of return on their investment And so they allowed the aquatics professionals to test one of their bodies of water and spend the money on the Sphagnum Moss, and they did it with their leisure pool

And this chart is really just a snapshot of several weeks of testing where they put the moss in, they took the moss out They put the moss in, they took the moss out And during those weeks they would test their chlorine usage, as well as their pH buffer, in this pool was CO2 And they looked at their monthly, weekly costs for chemicals with the moss in and with the moss out And then they applied the cost of the moss And what they found in their leisure pool was that even with the added cost of the moss, they were saving more money on chemicals from, again, that reduction of biofilm, reduction in the work the chlorine has to

do, it was actually saving them money so there was going to be a return on their investment

With this information, the City Council approved them to put it in all of their pools The next pool they put it

in was one of their therapy pools, so they did the same testing Put the moss in, take the moss out, look at the chemical costs And what they found here was that there was no savings for this particular body of water In some months the chemical costs actually went up, some months the chemical costs went down, but in the instance, it was never enough to cover the cost of the purchase of the moss itself

However, even though they weren’t saving money, they had numerous benefits from their clients They did see benefits from their maintenance department, and they decided even with the added cost they were going to keep it in

So that kind of backs up what I’ve heard from other people about the 50-50 Certain pools it seems to have a huge benefit It even has a cost savings Other pools it might be more expensive, but certainly people are still feeling beneficial about it

The next area is probably one of the newer products that has come on the market, and we’re certainly doing a lot of research and following up on facilities It’s called Clear Comfort And this is an advanced oxidation process where basically it injects the pool with hydroxyl radicals as well as a secondary

disinfectant which is hydrogen peroxide that’s created as a residual

Again the benefit here is that it can have a reduction in the crypto, so helping with RWIs It also can improve air quality And because it’s supplementing what the chlorine is doing, it can help reduce the

demand of chlorine And even in some residential purposes they’ve done no chlorine pools Obviously that would not be allowed for commercial applications, but certainly have seen the benefit that because it produces a residual, it can actually help eliminate the need for chlorine, at least at some level

Of course the marketing claim is that they are less expensive than UV but do similar improvement in terms of the chloramine reduction, removal of crypto, as well as improvement in air quality

Again the nice thing about this product is it’s just an enhancement to the current system We don’t change the type of chlorine we’re using We don’t change the pH buffer We just add a side stream that would inject this product in there So in the facilities I’ve seen that have tested it, again I have no concern because if it really isn’t working, if it’s really not doing everything it said, we can certainly remove it or turn

it off and go back to operating our pool as is

If you follow up with Clear Comfort as a company, again I’m not here to promote their product, but they’ve done a lot of scientific research and background, and they can certainly share all the wonderful things As

I mentioned earlier I don’t necessarily care about the sales pitch, I don’t necessarily care about all the – I’m sure this data is certainly critically important, but I wanted to know what the operator felt You know, was it a benefit And so I followed up with the operator for the facility that these tests were done, and this operator not only runs the pools, but also swims on a regular basis, actually gets in the water, teaches lessons as well as some of the water aerobics So she’s in the water on a regular basis And a couple things that she told me was one, she loves the product because it was installed for about a year and she had to do nothing with it It basically just ran At the end of the year they had to replace the cartridge The company had come in and did it for them, but she said between that year, between replacement

cartridges, there was just no maintenance, nothing that she had to do

However she did comment that she could tell whenever they were doing testing, and that every time they turned the system off, similar to putting the moss in, taking the moss out, they would turn the system on, turn the system off And the company was doing testing in terms of, you know, what they were finding in the pool and was it keeping chlorine balanced and settled out But the interesting thing from the operator’s standpoint is every time they turned the system off, she could tell And she would run up to them and say, what did you do to my pool today And this was really impactful to me because it was not just the fact that

it was yes, improving the water quality from a scientific standpoint, but it was actually improving the water quality from a point that an individual who used the pool on a regular basis could tell the difference, really

in a matter of hours, the benefit that this product was having

So the only challenge that I see right now is that it is new to the market, and so I have no answers of what this will look like in five to ten years But in five to ten years I’m certainly interested to see what it looks like

Another area of advancement from our mechanical rooms has been the advancement of chemical controllers This slide is just meant to represent all the pieces of equipment that could be tied and

controlled – either monitored or controlled – from your chemical controller And at the end of the day it’s really – it’s everything Everything from our chemical levels and actually monitoring how much chlorine we have in the tank where it can send alerts to your service company and have them bring a delivery It can

be pressure differentials for your filters and actually automate the backwash It can control VFDs and pumps and not just doing your chemicals Additionally it can be tied remotely to outside systems for remote monitoring

One of the most common, the MODBUS TCP/IP, on university campuses, we’ve started to see more and more that they want to be tied to a building management system where they’re centrally located access and monitoring And so these controllers can send over 200 parameters, everything from not only your pH over p, but also your chemical inventory, levels of the surge pit, pool levels, whether the auto fill is on, basically anything that’s tied to that controller can be at least monitored remotely

The benefit of when we tie all this information together is the more you know, the more you can do with it And I found this to be incredibly beneficial when troubleshooting problems And the idea is if you can look

at, you know, all the different things that are happening at the same time, find what the one anomaly that keeps happening over and over again is located, then you can certainly pinpoint your troubleshooting and come to a conclusion quicker

An instance that I had that was very beneficial is we had a client call us, and they said, you know, several times throughout the day their pool flow meter drops a couple hundred gallons per minute, which puts them outside of the requirements for turnover for the Health Department And they were concerned that if the Health Department came in they would have to shut down the pool because they were not meeting turnover However, they knew that the pool pump was designed to meet the flow, and they just couldn’t tell why it was happening several times throughout the day but they monitored from their flow meter

So I had them run an analysis of their flow meter, along with their chemical feed, as well as their heater Basically everything that was tied to that system And what I found was every time that the flow was dropping, and we saw that right on the chart, was also the same time that the heater was activated And every time that the heater was deactivated, the flow went right back up So with that I was able to go pinpoint – find where the heater bypass loop went, and I realized that the flow meter, the flow sensor, actually had been mounted on the side stream loop around the heater It wasn’t that the flow was actually changing, it was just that a piece of the flow was going around the flow sensor whenever the heater was activated

If we hadn’t have had all the information tied together, I don’t know if we would have found that problem

We certainly found it much quicker because we had the information right in front of us and were able to pinpoint that the flow was directly related to the heater

Another benefit when we’re tying multiple systems together is we can share information that one system knows with another An example would be sharing combined chlorine values with our air handling unit While we all know that we’re trying to be as efficient as possible with air handling, and to be efficient we want to recirculate the air as much as possible On the other side, we want to improve swimmer air comfort and air quality, and we do that by bringing in 100% outside air But that’s horribly inefficient in terms of utilities So the balance is finding that sweet spot in between

By incorporating all this information, by integrating all this information, we can actually basically balance our air handling and up the ante, up the amount of air that we’re bringing in only when we need it, and lower the amount of air that we’re bringing in when we don’t need it So by setting your combined chlorine value basically whenever our combined chlorine maybe gets above 2 parts per million, we start bringing

in fresh air until that level gets below 2, and then we go back to recirculation

Similarly, this can be done with UV control So as we’re looking at indoor pools, we typically set our UV so that it’s taking out chloramines at all times But what we realize is that that UV is going to run at full strength more often than it needs to because we’re not always producing combined chlorine So there are times where the UV needs to be running 100% Well once those combined chlorines are taken care of, maybe we could lower it to just a sanitation level so that we know we’re still going to take out all of our crypto and all of the other RWIs, but we’re not putting in the extra dosage needed for combined chlorine

So similar to the air handling unit, we have that set point And when that set point, if it’s above 2, we ramp up our UV and hit 100% dosage If we don’t have any combined chlorine present in the pool, we can lower that set point, or lower that UV dosage and just save a little energy

Another area of advancement, it’s actually been around for a long time especially if you look outside the pool industry, it’s been around 25, 30 years, it’s use of variable frequency drives The reason I bring it up today is this has really become very cost effective and something that almost every pump in almost every pool situation should have because the savings is incredible What I always tell operators is go into your mechanical room and look at how many valves you have that are just not quite all the way open, just kind

of slightly valved back Typically you’re valving back either your recirculation pump to get in line with your required flow for turnover, or you might be dialing back a feature pump, or you don’t need the sprays to be shooting all the way to the ceiling of an indoor pool or spraying onto the deck at your outdoor pool So you

valve it down so it doesn’t have quite as much flow Every time you valve it down, you’re basically wasting energy, and that energy, you’re pushing that water against that valve, using energy of the pump, and it’s restricting what it can do

By using the VFD, you’re basically going to dial that pump down to only produce what you need You don’t need to valve it back, you don’t need to restrict it in any way, you just let it run exactly what it needs to

The reason this is so impactful is running the motor at 80% of its normal operating speed equates to about a 50% energy savings So it costs half as much to run that pump at 80% as it does to run it at 100%

That also means that you can run two pumps dialed down cheaper than you can run one pump at 100%

So it’s pretty impactful

And so these savings, we’ve seen (inaudible) BFDs, even on seasonal facilities, will have a payback of just a couple of years, and typically within the first year for year-round pools

The same is true for LED underwater lighting When LEDs first came out they were a little bit more expensive, it was a little bit more challenging for some communities to get But the cost has come down significantly Additionally the color is more of a true white color, so it’s come around It’s much more comparable than what we’ve seen in the past But now we do have the significant savings We have both the longtime life expectancy which is going to save us on the replacement costs But also the fact that they just use less energy while running

The other benefit that we’ve seen and really even making its way into the recreation market is the use of the color-changing capabilities So turning your pool into maybe a little nightclub, especially used on universities or maybe for adult swims But a very inexpensive way to add some recreation value

So the next section we’re going to talk about some trends that we’ve seen related to competitive

swimming Again, one of the biggest trends that we’ve seen is the use of pre-engineered pools The most common recognized around the United States would be the Myrtha They’re the ones who typically do the Olympic pools as well as in the U.S provide the Olympic trial pools Additionally there’s Astral, Natare and Bradford So several manufacturers of pre-engineered pools

Historically they’ve always been recognized for the rectilinear pools, i.e just the traditional lap or

competition pool But it is good to point out that these can all be done with a curved section, and we’ve done pre-formed pool vortexes, lazy rivers using custom-shaped panels So while they are traditionally and well thought of for lap pools, they can actually be done for really any type of pool

The other thing that we’ve seen is obviously they’re a great opportunity for short term installations And people see them, obviously the Olympic trials It’s the one time every four years that we need that many spectator seats So it’s really nice to have that temporary solution, but it’s really important to point out that it’s not actually a temporary solution These are all long-term solutions that just because of their pre-engineered nature are able to be put into temporary solutions So it’s one of the best things about

Olympic trials, is it’s a real pool, just done in a temporary solution

The biggest challenge that we’ve seen is that compared to the straight construction cost, we’ve seen about a 25, 50% premium over traditional concrete construction However my warning there would be that you can’t compare apples to apples in this situation, it’s really apples to oranges There are several other factors that need to be taken into place in terms of timing of construction, structural requirements from the ground and digging into the ground As well as some unique challenges that we’ve seen in Alaska and the ability to just get concrete to remote locations versus drop shipping freight

So for all those reasons you need to really look at, you know, all the different costs and your specific situation before making that decision

The other nice thing is these pre-engineered systems typically come with at least a 15 year warranty, which is more than you typically see on any type of traditional pool

And the other thing I mentioned is timing, so they can expedite the construction schedule

I’m going to let this video play It’s just about a minute long But this is the construction of a temporary pool, it was a Myrtha pool, done for the short course championships And I believe this was back in 2004 But you can see on the left-hand side those two tanks were put in place That’s actually the mechanical system Those are the surge tanks They’re currently putting up all the wall system And you see it’s done inside an existing arena And so that’s where we did our spectator seating And then that way we could have more spectator seating that’s never needed for any other swimming event throughout the year Full mechanical system, fully treated The full pools, and then once they get all the walls up, they start putting that PVC membrane in to seal it all tight And then you can see they’ll start putting the deck up around it, putting the markings into the pool

This whole time lapse video was done over about a two-week period So you can see the construction of

a brand new, high-end competition pool was done in a two-week period And that’s not the normal, certainly done specific for these events But it just shows the capabilities in terms of fast-tracking a project that these pre-engineered solutions bring

The other area we’re seeing some improvements is in swim meets As we look at one of the biggest challenges for competition swimming is just how boring it is to watch a swim meet if you attend the swim meet With the world today, it’s all about getting more information So we’re starting to see integration of timing systems so we can actually see record breaks Also tied in to social media Obviously parents like

to get in, promote what their kid’s doing So having that integration through those websites Having live mobile apps that have the heat sheets, so instead of buying that printed, you know, 50, 100-page heat sheet, it’s actually a mobile app and it keeps updating as we go into finals as well as we see people dropping out

And then the ability of having the results and accessing the results online and getting that information quicker It’s all about getting more information to people quicker

One of the challenges that we see with all of this web access, you know, web information, which is all really great, but, you know, it has a pretty big design impact on the facility And I was talking in one community to their IT professional, and he was, you know, mentioned to me that in today’s world he has

to plan for every person walking in the building might have up to three devices It could be a laptop, a tablet, and a cell phone And he says he sees parents sitting there, you know, with their cell phone obviously connected to the WiFi, possibly on their tablet, that maybe their child is using, and of course they’re on their laptop answering emails

As an example, in the Pan American games, they had to use 27 different WiFi access points because they had about 4,500 people in the building And that was just to handle, again, the amount of internet that’s happening at those events, which is, again, very unique to the event, and also something that’s continuing to change as we start putting more and more things in the Cloud

And we’re also looking at enhancing these swim meets The incorporation of scoreboards And whenever we’re working on a new project, people ask, how much does the timing system cost? Well, the answer is the timing system is pretty inexpensive, it’s how much do you want to spend on a scoreboard, and there’s almost no upper limit

What we’re starting to see is obviously the instant replay, having results, video playback on actual

scoreboards, not just showing the lane, the heat, and the times It’s actually, you know, we’re trying to

actually turn an event into a true event and make it not just something about fast pools for athletes, but making something fun for spectators

Whenever I talk about this it always reminds me of a story, one of my sister-in-laws swam at the Olympic trials back in 2008, and so her whole family, my wife and all of her siblings, went to go watch her And one

of her other sisters never swam and really had never been to a swim meet And she was sitting there at the Olympic trials, it’s really exciting, world records are being broken, and she looks at us and she says, I don’t know why you guys always complain about swim meets, these are really fun and exciting And we all kind of looked at each other and kind of started laughing, and we said, you know, you don’t know, but this is not a typical swim meet, this is the Olympic trials But it made me start realizing there wasn’t anything special She didn’t care about the people in the water What she cared about was the

excitement, the fireworks The fact that they had the world record line almost being broken in every heat The announcements that are happening It’s just the excitement that goes along with that And we can really create that at any level It just takes time, and commitment, and some extra dollars

The other thing that we’re starting to see is if you look at some of our basketball arenas, our high-end football stadiums, they’re starting to incorporate TVs throughout So the event doesn’t stop when you’re just looking at the event It happens on your way to concessions, it happens on your way to the

restrooms, and the idea is to incorporate all this information throughout the entire building And again, more information more readily available

Another thing we’re seeing from the competitive swimming is the use of virtual trainer This is essentially

an underwater LED light that you can use for pacing The nice thing about this, you can set times You can try to pace yourself through a specific time You can also set maybe your own pace and then try to see if you can beat it, or see if you can maintain it

The other cool thing that I think is you can actually set it to maybe Michael Phelps’s world record, and you can see how close you could be to a world record

And this starts going beyond just the competitive training aspect, but on into the recreational usage, which

is you can make swimming fun again And while swimming laps back and forth by yourself isn’t

necessarily the definition of fun for a lot of people, competing, challenging, and bettering yourself certainly

is an area that people think is fun

The challenges, these can be permanent, but they need to be basically planned for at the initial design so that you have the channel to put the light in They can also be done temporary where they just lay on top

of the pool You obviously just need to have the (inaudible) requirement available literally off the deck They do incorporate with iPads and iPhones You can have the apps, start doing tracking, set up different activities and workouts And so, again, it’s really nice, not only just from being able to have it for a virtual trainer, but also for maybe even bringing into some young adult and giving him something more to do in our lap lanes

These are underwater cameras A lot of times we’re doing old pools, old (inaudible) that have those underwater viewing windows You know, people ask, can we do those underwater viewing windows again And certainly we can, but in reality we’ve found that the use of underwater cameras is not only cheaper but really better So with the challenge that we saw with those underwater viewing windows is (inaudible) there was some staircase that the coach had to go behind some door and go down, and it took

a couple minutes to get down there The divers would go, maybe have a video recording going on, would take some notes After that dive session the coach would go back up to the deck and comment

Now with the use of underwater cameras, they can have more angles The picture is just as good They’re being recorded They have TVs on the deck with the TiVo system so it’s being basically delayed by 30 or

40 seconds so the swimmer can get out of the water and then go walk over to the TV and see their dive The coach is able to not only watch it, see the video, but then comment immediately with the diver

So for all these reasons, we’ve really seen that underwater cameras have taken over the need for this The thing that we have to watch out for is obviously all those things we talked about, having the TiVo and the TV on deck, are we going to have it on deck, is it mounted, is it going to be protected from the indoor air quality? Or is it something that we want to have that could be removed on a cart and be stored away

as needed

And the last one, the fantasy swimming app So many of us just finished up or are in the process of wrapping up our fantasy football seasons And, you know, that really changed football and the NFL when they created fantasy football More people are interested in more games, understanding the entire league and not just maybe their own team

Well the same can be true with swimming The idea is that this is at every local meet You have all the different teams upload their different swimmers And you can do a fantasy swimming app, and start to learn about other swimmers, start to care about other teams, and really get yourself engaged when your child isn’t just swimming My parents used to always tell me, you know, at a swim meet they’re there for eight hours And basically it was wait for three hours, and then watch me swim for two minutes Wait for another hour, watch me swim for a minute Wait for another two hours, watch me swim for two-and-a-half minutes And that was their whole day But with this fantasy swimming app, the idea is to maybe get more excited about watching someone from another team, someone else I swam with, swim, and have all the different events and keep yourself engaged throughout the entire event

And the last idea, and I want to stress this as an idea, this is just a concept that we’ve batted around in our office, but every time you hear about major events, everyone knows that the middle lanes are

considered the fast lanes And the reason is they have the least impact from all the other swimmers They’re away from the walls And, you know, they’re going to have the fastest water

So we started thinking, you know, what if we could create the exact same swimming situation for every person What if we could create the individual lane so that no lane impacted the other lane, it was just a true swimming experience The swimmer, the water, no one else impacting each other

The challenges, obviously, we’re trying to minimize the wave impact, the lane lines absorb the waves Were we to do hard walls, they would actually increase the waves, which would actually slow down our swimmers, make slower pools Also trying to get the circulation around the entire area having gutters, a perimeter gutter around the entire lane would not be very cost effective So probably not a realistic idea, but certainly something to think about is can we continue to improve our pool design to make them faster than they are today

All right, next up is our recreational swimming technologies And this is where we basically see more and more fun stuff hit the market

So one of the things that we’re seeing is on the rise in attractions, the recreational group has really started

to lean towards the more of the fun And so the rides are becoming more and more extreme This is an example of a ride called the Aqua Loop And as you can see, it would actually spin the slide rider around and actually give them a zero G feel So it’s pretty extreme

A couple of challenges with this One, because it’s so extreme, has a very limited user group in terms of the people who would want to go on it As you get older adults, obviously they’re going to be scared away Younger kids are also scared away And so it shouldn’t be the first ride you purchase, and really it should probably be the last ride When you’ve rounded out all the other rides and attractions, you want to

be unique, this is something to look at

The other challenge is if you look on kind of the bottom of that picture, you see an opening to the slide And that’s because not everyone makes it all the way around, which means they come sliding back down,

and there’s an access path where you can pull them out, and then they would go back down the

staircase

So certainly a very unique and risky slide, which adds a lot of opportunity and excitement But going to have its operational challenges associated with it as well

The next one is the champagne bowl This was originally designed for the use on cruise ships So cruise ships wanted to have, they have basically everything you could find at a water park, on the mainland, they’re starting to do on cruise ships They’re trying to minimize the amount of bodies of water, obviously from a weight and also sanitation standpoint So the creation of the champagne bowl was the use of the bowl slide, which traditionally had a dropout into a deep body of water This one basically you spin around until you come to a stop, and then you would stand up and walk down a staircase

So, again, very beneficial for the cruise ships, but additionally, if we’re looking at maybe a community that wants to go to a thrill ride, add a great amenity and feature, but wants to save some money and not have

to build a second pool, or maybe they don’t have the space for that body of water, this would be an option for them as well

The downside that I’ve seen is when you talk to kids going down it, they basically feel that the ride has two parts One is the actual slide, going down this steep slide and spinning around in a circle which is a lot of fun But the other part is actually the free fall out, kind of not knowing where you’re going and landing in the water So it’s taking out, you know, in my opinion, about half the fun from the kids’

standpoint

The next couple of slides, you’ll see they’re all called Express And so one of the manufacturers for water slides came out with their Express line, and the idea was we have all these big commercial water parks that are doing big, extreme fun rides, but they’re way too expensive, way too large for any city to ever put into their water parks And so they made the Express line that was the same rides, same experience, but

on a much smaller foot print and more cost effective So all of these rides have a price tag under a million dollars, which is still a significant amount of money, but much less expensive than the three, four, five million dollars that they used to be

So, again, the Boomerango, the traditional Boomerango had two sides where you would take a raft You’d actually go up the wall, and then you kind of go back and forth and back and forth up and down the wall, spinning around In the Express version you’re going to go down, go up that wall once, and go back out and splash into the catch pool So you still have that same experience, but instead of doing it multiple times, you go through it once and out the ride It also helps speed up how many people you can get through on an hourly basis

The next Express is the Master Blaster Express The Master Blaster was essentially a water roller

coaster So this is a ride you would actually go down the slide and then it would use water jets to throw you back up, and then you’d keep going down The first generations of the Master Blaster had several ups and downs, just like the traditional roller coaster So you’d start high, go down a couple loops, go back up, go down a couple loops, go back up

The challenge was that not every time would the raft actually catch the water and make it back up the hill, which meant before you could launch a raft you had to make sure that the raft before them was all the way through all the ups Which meant that the throughput for this ride was very slow It took a while before you’d launch the next ride

The other challenge is if a rider didn’t make it all the way up, you basically had to shut down the ride, bring out a crane, go to that low point, and help them get moving and take them down

With the Express version, they basically have one up, so you still have that experience of going down and going back up, but after you go up once, you just finish out the ride So it’s, again, Express If you also