Sports 08
Swimming Pool Design
Swimming pools are the most expensive sports facility per square metre most clients will ever build, and the most expensive to run. The water is the straightforward part. The plant room, the envelope and the operating model are the project.
Competition pools and aquatic centres · teaching and learn-to-swim pools · school and institutional pools · community and club pools · academy aquatic facilities · pool halls and their envelopes. Concept design, planning and 3D visualisation.
Competitive swimming runs at two course lengths — long course at 50 m and short course at 25 m — and an Olympic-standard pool is 50 m long and 25 m wide, set out as ten lanes of 2.5 m. Depth, freeboard, wall tolerance, deck width and water temperature come with those figures and are governed by World Aquatics; take them from the current facilities rules. The planning point is that a 50 m pool is not a bigger 25 m pool. It is roughly double the water volume, double the treatment load, a larger hall, a longer structural span and a permanently higher energy bill.
Competition wants depth and cooler water. Learn-to-swim wants shallow, warmer water. Therapy and older users want warmer still. Diving needs its own deep tank and its own volume above it. One tank cannot serve all of them, and trying produces a pool too cold for beginners and too shallow for competition. The alternatives are a movable floor and boom, which buy flexibility at real capital and maintenance cost, or a second smaller tank — usually the better answer for a school, academy or community facility.
Filtration, circulation, dosing, heating, the balance tank and backwash occupy a substantial volume that must be planned from the first sketch, adjacent to and usually below the pool, because the hydraulics do not negotiate. Three failures repeat: the plant room sized last and too small to replace a filter vessel in fifteen years; no equipment route in or out except through the pool hall; and the balance tank treated as a detail when it is structure, below water level, and has to be coordinated before anything is cast.
A warm, humid, chlorine-laden hall attacks the building. Where moist air reaches the structure through an unsealed vapour barrier or a thermal bridge, it condenses inside the construction and corrosion begins where nobody can see it. This is the most common serious defect in indoor aquatic centres and it is an architectural failure, not a services one — continuous vapour barrier, detailing without thermal bridges, surface temperatures above dew point, air distribution that washes the glazing, and materials specified for a chlorinated atmosphere.
A pool is an operating-cost commitment. Water heating, hall heating, dehumidification, chemicals, water replacement and lifeguarding run every day regardless of how many people swim. The concept has to be tested against a realistic operating budget and a realistic programme — and where it fails, the answer is a smaller pool with a better programme, not a larger pool with an optimistic one.
Site test and hall envelope study · pool configuration options tested against the programme · plant room volume, position and access strategy · envelope and moisture strategy at concept level · deck and changing capacity · conceptual architecture · 3D visualisation and boards.
Planning a Swimming Pool Complex: Everything That Isn’t the Pool
Sports Facility Planning
Sports Complex Design
Should we build 25 m or 50 m?
Ask what the pool is for on a Wednesday morning. A 50 m pool is roughly double the water volume, treatment load and energy cost of a 25 m pool. If the real programme is learn-to-swim, school sessions and fitness lanes, a 25 m pool with a movable boom, or a 25 m pool plus a teaching pool, serves it far better than a 50 m tank at a third of capacity.
How much space does the plant room need?
Substantially more than most briefs allow, and it has to be planned from the first sketch — adjacent to and usually below the pool, because the hydraulics do not negotiate. Size it for the treatment design and for replacing a filter vessel in fifteen years, and draw the equipment route in and out before the walls are fixed.
Why do indoor pools corrode?
Warm, humid, chlorine-laden air reaches the structure through an unsealed vapour barrier or a thermal bridge and condenses inside the construction, where nobody can see it. It is the most common serious defect in indoor aquatic centres and it is an architectural failure, not a services one.
What drives the operating cost?
Water heating, hall heating, dehumidification, chemicals, water replacement and lifeguarding — all running every day regardless of how many people swim. A pool is an operating-cost commitment, not a capital-cost one, and where the concept fails that test the answer is a smaller pool with a better programme.
Confidential Capability
Detailed Design & Technical Documentation — developed for selected client engagements and kept strictly confidential. Working drawings and client-specific technical documents are never published online.