Chan - A guide to swimming pool maintenance and filtration systems: an instructional know-how on everything you need to know about swimming pools

A GUIDE TO
SWIMMING POOL MAINTENANCE AND FILTRATION SYSTEMS

An Instructional Know-How on Everything You Need to Know About Swimming Pools

E T Chan

Copyright 2015 E T Chan. All rights reserved.

ISBN

978-1-4828-3164-1 (sc)

978-1-4828-3165-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015953394

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore

09/30/2015

Contents

As a sports enthusiast, I grew up playing a number of sports and naturally took an affinity to swimming. During those times, there were no swimming pools it was the open seas, big flooded drains and sometimes murky rivers.

When I later became the Director of Facilities with the Singapore Sports Council, it coincided with the Sports for the masses policy and campaign. I then had to lead in the formulation of the overall Master Plan for sports facilities in Singapore, which of course, included swimming pools for dedicated housing development areas. We did research, made study trips and engaged consultants to design and construct swimming complexes, not only for recreational swimming for the masses but also for competitions, including meeting international competition standards. I wished then that I had a reference book that could take us through the complexities of pool construction.

My team and I spent many years, learning on the job, improving and perfecting the designs for better and more efficient maintenance and operations of swimming pools.

Mr Chan Eng Teck, the author of this book, has had more than 30 years of experience in the construction and maintenance of swimming pools.

It is very noteworthy that he decided to pen down his lifes work, experience and knowledge. It is invaluable for architects, engineers and pool maintenance technicians.

The book is clear, concise and presented in a very comprehensible manner. It serves as an excellent guide book for professionals involved in swimming pool designing, construction and maintenance. It contains details covering the required mechanical and electrical engineering as well as the application of swimming pool filtration system designs and analyses in solving most of the practical but rather complex problems faced by the professionals in this industry.

Presently, consultants are appointed through a procurement procedure or public tender. Often, previous experienced consultants do not get reappointed again; there may be a problem in consistencies of standards without an official reference.

This reference book is thus, timely and invaluable in serving its purpose.

YEE WENG PHEI

When I first started business in this niche market more than 30 years ago, I conducted daily in-house training for my staff. I explained how equipment and piping had to be installed and why they had to be installed in a certain way to facilitate maintenance and for ease of operations. In those days, skilled labour was scarce and technical know-how was poor. The staff had benefitted immensely from these trainings and we were able to set the installation standards for others to follow.

In this book, I set out to put on record the experience and knowledge that I had garnered through these years. Some of the statements, opinions, events and observations mentioned and expressed in this book are frank and blunt, but bear no malice or mischief, with no intention to cause harm to any parties or to grind any axes. It is my fervent hope that readers can learn something from these experiences.

I am often appalled by the poor standards of installations that I was fortunate to have witnessed around the world and in Singapore. Such poor installations demonstrate that these installers, so proudly calling themselves specialists, are not taking their work seriously. To excel in any field, you must take pride in your work.

The commercial swimming pool market is relatively small as compared to other products. Most original pool equipment manufacturers for domestic pools are from Europe and USA. As China becomes the factory to the world, copies of these products from China are not uncommon. Due to the low commercial value and market size, the Japanese manufacturers do not seem to show much interest in this field.

Through these years, there has not been much innovation in the swimming pool industries, except for the disinfection process where ozonation is introduced in some countries, particularly in Germany, France and Switzerland. The additions of water features and interactive water play equipment to liven up the pool as a childrens playground are the latest craze.

A few years ago, an acquaintance, a one-man operation, swimming pool service man, invited me to visit his store in a rented terrace house in Singapore. The car park porch of this house was converted for equipment storage.

On entering the premises, I was amazed by the quantity of used filters and pumps stacked in the store. Most of those used filter shells and pump housings were still in relatively good condition. My unscrupulous host bragged that he had managed to convince his unwary customers to replace them instead of having them repaired. As I left the premises, I felt a great sense of sadness and remorse for his clients.

Most of the equipment I had seen in this store could still provide years of useful service. Only the spider gaskets of the multi-port valves of the FRP filters had needed to be replaced to enable them to be put back to useful service. For the pumps, probably the mechanical seals would need to be replaced or the motors need to be rewound to enable them to be operational again.

Such unscrupulous swimming pool servicemen are a-plenty in the local swimming pool industry. They provide very low prices to maintain swimming pools, but schemed to increase their income with maintenance repairs and replacements. Most of these swimming pool servicemen have elementary technical knowledge of the filtration systems and the equipment. Their knowledge of pool water chemistry is confined only to chlorine addition and maintaining the pH of the pool water.

Probably, the pool owners deserved to be taken advantage of. They have selected the company or person, many swimming pool servicing companies in Singapore are one-man outfits offering the lowest price to maintain their pools, without due consideration of the other factors in the purchasing process. They leave the options of when and what ought to be done to the maintenance personnel. Maintenance of the heart of the swimming pool - the filtration equipment, and the other elements of pool water chemistry are forgotten as long as the pool water is not greenish and appears clean.

Through these years, I have also the privilege to witness both overly and under-sized filtration plant rooms that are sometimes even forgotten for its provision by the project architect. In every corner of the world, space is money in terms of land and construction costs. Many of our local engineers do not have the faintest idea of how to size a proper filtration plant room. Swimming pool drawings prepared for tenders are sub-standard.