Municipal Swimming Pools Research Articles

Holborn, Lambeth and Manchester: Three Case Studies in Municipal Swimming Pool Provision

Municipal development of swimming facilities was not monolithic. Each municipal authority had its own concerns around the provision of bathing places. The London boroughs of Holborn and Lambeth provide examples of two conservative, although in different ways, municipal authorities that were generally quite cautious in their approach to providing access to swimming pools. The city of Manchester, on the other hand, quite literally dived into provision of such facilities and became the leading city in England in terms of swimming bath provision by 1918.

La piscine de Pantin (1935-1937) : une réalisation architecturale et sociale d'envergure

"The swimming pool of Pantin : an ambitious architectural and social achievement", by Christelle Inizan. In 1935, while the construction of a sewage pumping and treatment plant was planned by the administration of the French water Utility, the town Council of Pantin decided to have a municipal swimming pool built nearby. It would be supplied with warm waters drawn from one of the neighbouring wells. The mayor of the time, Charles Auray, commissioned his son, as a twenty-four-year-old architect, and appointed Jean Molinié, as a more experienced engineer, to him. The two buildings were definitely architecturally related, which would be paradoxically emphasized by the eventual alterations of the factory façades. Combining ail the features characteristic of the contemporary swimming pools, the swimming pool of Pantin freely borrows from the works of one of the most outstanding personalities of the Dutch Modem Movement, the architect Willem Marinus Dudok.

Drowning of British children abroad

To quantify the risks of British children drowning abroad. The numbers of British children drowning abroad were estimated for 1996-2003 using the RoSPA/RLSS press cutting database. We compared these figures with the numbers of British children going abroad from the International Passenger Survey from the Office of National Statistics. Sixty-eight children (45 boys-23 Girls) drowned in the eight-year period: 48 (71%) in swimming pools (mostly in hotels). Allowing for exposure, the rate was higher in North America [5.2 (CI 2.9-9.4)/million tourists] than the European Union [1.9 (CI 1.4-2.5)/million tourists] p = 0.002. On average eight British children drown each year abroad. This is therefore a rare but tragic event. Most of these episodes happen in swimming pools and this needs to be compared to the one child that dies each year in municipal swimming pools in the United Kingdom where there is adequate lifeguarding. It may be that parents have a false sense of security for their children in pools abroad. We believe that there needs to be action from the European Union on this important event.

Cooperative facility location games

The location of facilities in order to provide service for customers is a well-studied problem in the operations research literature. In the basic model, there is a predefined cost for opening a facility and also for connecting a customer to a facility, the goal being to minimize the total cost. Often, both in the case of public facilities (such as libraries, municipal swimming pools, fire stations, … ) and private facilities (such as distribution centers, switching stations, … ), we may want to find a ‘fair’ allocation of the total cost to the customers—this is known as the cost allocation problem. A central question in cooperative game theory is whether the total cost can be allocated to the customers such that no coalition of customers has any incentive to build their own facility or to ask a competitor to service them. We establish strong connections between fair cost allocations and linear programming relaxations for several variants of the facility location problem. In particular, we show that a fair cost allocation exists if and only if there is no integrality gap for a corresponding linear programming relaxation; this was only known for the simplest unconstrained variant of the facility location problem. Moreover, we introduce a subtle variant of randomized rounding and derive new proofs for the existence of fair cost allocations for several classes of instances. We also show that it is in general NP-complete to decide whether a fair cost allocation exists and whether a given allocation is fair.

Detection of adenovirus outbreak at a municipal swimming pool by nested PCR amplification

In July 1995 an outbreak of pharyngoconjuctivitis caused by adenoviruses occurred among athletes participating in a swimming contest in a town in southern Greece (Peloponnese). At least 80 persons displayed symptoms of the illness, with the predominant ones being high fever, sore throat, conjuctivitis, headache, and abdominal pain. Poor chlorination was probably the cause of the outbreak (residual chlorine <0.2 mg/l), as after hyperchlorination the spread of adenoviruses stopped. Rapid detection of adenoviruses in the municipal swimming pool water by nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification allowed quick control of the outbreak.

95/01123 Problems associated with mechanical refrigeration based heat recovery systems in municipal swimming pools

95/01123 Problems associated with mechanical refrigeration based heat recovery systems in municipal swimming pools

95/01117 Energy recovery in municipal swimming pools

95/01117 Energy recovery in municipal swimming pools

Problems associated with mechanical refrigeration based heat recovery systems in municipal swimming pools

The design of refrigeration-based heat recovery systems for municipal swimming pools is discussed and the performance of all such pools in Northern Ireland is analysed. It is found that most systems are incorrectly designed and specified, that the operating conditions are usually sub-optimal and that the control systems are normally either inappropriate or non-existent. It is clear that heat-pump based swimming pool heat recovery systems are not understood by either the designers, the equipment suppliers, the installers or the operators.

Energy recovery in municipal swimming pools

After a discussion of heat losses and energy costs in municipal heated swimming pools, an analysis in presented of the performance of all of such pools in Northern Ireland. It is demonstrated that performance is generally well below that expected by the designers and reasons are identified as to why this should be so. The causes for poor performance are found to arise variously through poor design, inappropriate equipment selection and installation and bad control and operating practice. Part of the value of this study lies in the fact that as all pools in the region were included, with no pre-selection, the findings can be expected to be fairly representative of such installations throughout the United Kingdom.

Alternative heating of a municipal swimming pool

Swimming pools require large amounts of energy at low temperature levels, and are suitable for the application of alternative heating systems. Four different systems are considered: compression heat pump, absorption heat pump, motor driven heat pump with thermal recovery and a combined system. A short thermodynamic analysis is carried out which shows that the combined system has the lowest power requirement. Capital cost estimates demonstrate the advantage of choosing the absorption heat pump.

Occurrence of enteroviruses in community swimming pools.

Municipal swimming pools and wading pools were examined for the presence of human enteric viruses using a portable virus concentrator at the site to concentrate viruses from 100-gallon to 500-gallon samples. Ten of 14 samples contained viruses; three of these were positive for virus in the presence of residual free chlorine. Enteroviruses were isolated from two pools which exceeded the 0.4 ppm free residual chlorine standard. This study appears to be supportive of recent evidence that indicates a higher incidence of enterovirus infection among bathers. All seven wading pool samples contained virus. Coxsackieviruses B3 and B4, poliovirus 1, and echovirus 7 were isolated. Total coliform bacteria were not adequate indicators of the presence of virus, as six of the samples were positive for virus but negative for coliforms. Total plate counts appeared to provide a better indication of the sanitary quality of the pool water, but viruses could still be detected in samples that met currently recommended bacterial levels. It is possible that swimming and wading pools may serve as a means of transmission of enteroviral disease, especially in children, during summer months.

Assigning Blame: The Restoration of the “Sentimental Order” following an Accidental Death

Two drowning incidents in large municipal swimming pools were studied. In both, a similar process was observed in which an attempt was made to restore the “sentimental order” which had been fractured by the drownings. This was accomplished through discussion by staff members. This continued until a consensus was reached that generally absolved staff of blame and assigned it elsewhere. Two factors may have influenced this process in the incidences observed; the degree of outside validation, and the social value of the victims.

Sanitary Treatment of Swimming Pool Water with Calcium Hypochlorite.

It is necessary from sanitary point of view that water for swimming pool is kept free from germs, and disinfectants containing chlorine have been widly used for this purpose. Recently, a novel disinfectant composed of neutral salt of calcium hypochlorite was developed in Japan, and the large tablet being especially suitable for disinfection of swimming pool water has been marketed since last year. In order to establish a sanitary control method of swimming pool water with the product, experiments on both continuous charge method and direct throw method of the tablets were conducted at the municipal swimming pool in Takada, Niigata-prefecture, over one swimming season. It was proved that the above mentioned methods are satisfactory to the purpose.

Protects Municipal Swimming Pools

Protects Municipal Swimming Pools