The benefits of a swimming pool to overall health and recreational enjoyment are clear to anyone with a love for the water. However, backyard pools are, unfortunately, not available for use all year round. In colder months, an outdoor pool is not much more use than a large artificial puddle, relegating the fitness buffs to the treadmill and leisure swimmers to find other forms of recreation.
An indoor swimming pool liberates a swimmer from the strict seasonal limitations placed on an outdoor facility. Unlike their counterparts in backyards everywhere, indoor pools can be enjoyed all year round because the temperature of both the water and the air can be controlled.
Ideally, a pool strives to achieve thermal neutrality, that is, maintain a temperature as close as possible to human body temperature. Several factors contribute to a pool area’s temperature: user requirements, humidity control, air movement, mechanical heating equipment and building insulation. An indoor pool affords a pool owner more and better opportunities to control these factors than does an outdoor pool where most out-of-water factors are at the mercy of the elements. However, to try to maintain an enclosed and comfortable pool environment poses its own unique set of challenges.
An indoor swimming pool is essentially a large humidifier, capable of filling the air with evaporated water. When water vapor comes in contact with a cooler surface, as most surfaces particularly during colder months, it condenses and forms a glistening sweat. Condensation damages structures and wears out building materials many times faster than they would wear otherwise.
The first way to reduce humidity in a pool building is to control the temperature of the water and air in the enclosure. Ideal temperature depends on user requirements. A swimmer who intends to be very active, perhaps an athlete in training, would be comfortable in cooler water, around seventy-five degrees and the same out of water. A less active swimmer, perhaps an elderly person who is relaxing, will prefer a warmer temperature of anywhere from eighty to eighty-five degrees. Covering the pool when its not in use will go a long way to reducing humidity.
With the pool’s temperature appropriate, one can focus on aspects of the building which might reduce humidity. First, the pool enclosure must be well insulated from other spaces in the building. Air leakage will result in interstitial condensation, that is, sweating inside the walls, can be detrimental to a structure’s stability. Next, mechanical ventilation is perhaps the most effective way to control humidity. Since, as we have seen, the pool is a big humidifier, an equally large dehumidifier is necessary to provide balance. Dehumidifiers are especially effective in winter months given the relatively low humidity of the outside air.
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