Pool grand opening party set for June 20

Saturday festivities include music, food, family activities and free swimming. Festivities are planned from 1 to 4 p.m. with swimming open to the public until 6 p.m.

The construction fencing surrounding the site will be taken down today, and “snow fencing” to protect newly hydroseeded grassy areas will surround several areas on the site, including by the splash pad and next to the parking lot. Hege said the seeded areas should green up in a week or so.

The eight-lane 50-meter pool has a 140-foot slide, a diving board and a single-person climbing wall, which angles out over the water so if a person loses their grip, they simply fall in the water. Original plans were for four climbing wall panes to be adjacent to each other. There is room for them to be added later, Hege said.

The pool will also have a mechanized chair to lift handicapped persons into and out of the water.

Also included is an 1,800 square foot splash pad that will be free and open to the public.

Some equipment for the project, including lockers and kitchen appliances for the concession stand, are ordered and set to arrive in mid to late July, he said.

Purchases of both lockers and kitchen equipment had to be reduced to make budget on the project.

On Monday, last minute work included cleaning windows as part of a general overall cleaning. Northern Wasco County parks employees are handling all the landscaping, and were busy putting in top soil around the splash park. “For them, it’s been all hands on deck,” Hege said.

Home Depot donated materials for the landscaping, Hege said.

The pool itself was getting vacuumed, since it hadn’t been cleaned in several weeks because of all the dirt generated by bringing in top soil and installing sod.

A large grassy area on the north side of the pool has a gentle slope for a slight amphitheater effect. The locker rooms each have an open area with four showers, plus four toilets, a bench and hooks for belongings. The women’s lockerroom has a privacy changing area.

There are four more showers outside. The bathhouse also includes two family changing rooms.

The pool itself has a “zero edge” gutter system where the water level is even with the deck, instead of being the typical five or six inches below the deck. The grate over the gutter system slopes upward slightly from the pool to the deck to capture water splashing out. Because water doesn’t bounce off the pool wall and back at a swimmer, but instead flows into the gutter, it is what’s called a “fast pool” for competitive swimming.

At the splash park, some features were moved around because it was discovered that in high wind, a bunch of water was blowing to the pool area from the splash park, Hege said.

Final work was still to be done on Monday, but Hege said, “It’s pretty surprising how fast stuff can get done when it gets down to it.”

Things like paint touch up, cleaning and readying the pool office for business are still on the to-do list.

Hege lauded Hire Electric and Devco Mechanical as two main subcontractors on the project.

Harley Fork, a journeyman electrician with Hire Electric, came up to Hege Monday to talk about some last minute things. Hege said Fork, who has been on the job from the beginning “has done great work for us. We call him the man who knows everything.”

He also lauded Scott Bennett, the superintendent for construction manager/general contractor Triplett Wellman. “I just can’t say enough good things about that guy,” Hege said. “It’s all about solving the problem.

“It never would’ve happened without him driving, and driving in a nice way,” Hege said of Bennett.

Above the bathhouse are the new offices, which the parks district took out a $300,000 loan to help build, since the project came in over budget. The loan will be paid back with money that used to go to rent for the current rec offices downtown.

The pool is also a wifi hotspot, which has been made even better than it was before, Hege said.

A bridge connects the offices to the skatepark, and a path leads to two handicapped parking spaces at the skate park.

“The handicapped stalls kind of took the space where the skateparkers have informally parked, but we had to have ADA [handicapped] parking,” Hege said.

The second story office has substantial overhangs that provide total shade to keep the offices cooler in summer.

When the sun angles lower in winter, it will allow sun to come in and help with heating.

A wide partial wraparound deck outside the parks office also serves as a shade overhang for the bathhouse and concession stand.

Hege said last week when temperatures were over 100 and there was no air conditioning yet in the office space, it was still fairly cool because of the total shading from the sun provided by the wide overhangs.

The parks office space includes a large open area at the front where the board will meet. Hege pointed to a view of Mt. Hood out the sliding glass doors and said, “Not a bad view.”

The parks district owns a large area around the pool. “There are a lot of opportunity to develop more stuff,” he said.

The pool itself holds 435,000 gallons, and water is recirculated at a rate of 1,328 gallons per minute, meaning the entire pool is recirculated every six hours.

The water is pumped into four huge filters in the mechanical room below the east deck. Water is filtered through No. 20 silica sand, and then peat gravel, which traps debris before being sent back into the pool.

Every few days, the filters are backwashed, meaning the water flow is reversed through the filter, going from the gravel bottom up into the sand, where the sand gets fluffed up and debris is flushed out and into the city waste water system. Water is fed into the pool from the bottom, creating more diffuse heating, said Gary Gripp, with Anderson Poolworks of Wilsonville.

Equipment in the mechanical room automatically tests the water and chlorinates the water, although lifeguards will still test the water as a double check and will still have to add some chemicals by hand. Gripp pointed to two panels on the wall of the mechanical room that control chlorination levels. “Those are the ‘pool guys’ that never leave the mechanical room,” he said.

Hege lauded the Anderson pool crew, saying, “They’ve done a good job; hard workers.”