Vancouver Park Board commissioners heard a sobering presentation this week over severe problems the city’s largest outdoor pool is facing due to its age and storm-related damage.
While they await the results of a feasibility study over the future Kitsilano pool, commissioners heard Monday night that the facility was leaking 30,000 litres of water an hour due to cracks and breaks in recirculation pipes.
“It is not a typo. It’s a hard number to wrap your head around,” said Matthew Halverson, a facilities manager with the city.
That’s about 8L per second, depending on how many leaks there are and where they are in the system that’s not an amazing number. What is amazing is that ground around the pool hasn’t liquified or heaved heavily in the winter.
It’s a lot of water, but it seems like it’s ocean water. So it doesn’t really cost anything other than the energy to pump it, and the damage the erosion may be causing. And I guess more bleach than they’d normally use.
It’s less than 1 kW of power to pump that much water 5 meters up.
So like 10 cents per hour to operate the pump.
The pool is open from 3 months per year.
.1 ($/hr) x 24 (hrs/day) x 365 (days/year) x (3/12) (months/month)
219$/year
Yawn.
