Aquatic centre heating coil failure

A large heating coil, part of the heating system for Alpine Aqualand is likely to need replacing after a system failure on Sunday morning, Queenstown Lakes District Council chief executive Duncan Field said. The failure was associated with a severe frost that morning he said.

The coil is one of the sustainable design elements incorporated in the new centre, recycling heat from the complex to warm the incoming air temperature using a large copper coil. “For some reason the circulating pump has failed and the warm water in the coil has frozen, given the exterior temperature at the time was around minus 6 degrees,” Mr Field said.

The pump was one of several mechanisms used to keep the pool heated. “At the moment we are continuing to heat the pool utilising the other heating systems, including LPG gas and power but the pool temperature has dropped a couple of degrees, given the current overnight air temperatures,” Mr Field said.

The council was urgently investigating another source of heating in order to keep the centre open and operating, while the damaged coil was replaced.

“All the specs for the centre have been designed to operate in extreme cold and hot conditions. In this case there has been some sort of system failure beyond the realms of that design,” Mr Field said.

It was likely the coil, which was expected to be covered by insurance, would take several weeks to be replaced.

“The council has asked the centre’s project and design team to come up with an alternative to enable us to keep the pool operating,” Mr Field said.

It had also requested a review of all warning systems around components that might also potentially be affected by severe frosts at the pool.

“In this case large fans suck fresh cold air into the building to be heated by the coil. That system should have shut down once the water circulation in the coil failed, which would have prevented the coil from freezing,’ Mr Field said.

It could be expected that in a facility of the complexity and size of an aquatic centre some issues would require ironing out within the first few months of operation. “Unfortunately this failure is on a larger scale than we would have liked but hopefully we can weather the situation and keep the facility operating while the problem is remedied. We plan to do our level best,” Mr Field said.