Renovated Pretoria North swimming pool is now open to the public
It was anticipated that the pool would be operational by mid-December, but due to the nature of the repairs, product shortages and labour unrest, more time was needed.
The newly repaired main swimming pool in Pretoria North was officially opened to the public on Monday, January 27.
This exciting news comes after the Pretoria North main pool on President Steyn Street was closed for almost seven months due to extensive renovations.
It was anticipated that the pool would be operational by mid-December last year.
However, due to the nature of the repairs, shortages of products and labour unrest, more time was needed to fix the many leaks, cracked floor and tiles, and for the installation of expansion joints.
Metro spokesperson Lindela Mashigo said after the completion of the renovations, the technical team made a readiness assessment of the pool.
“The team confirmed the readiness of the pool.”
Mashigo said the first phase of the renovations had commenced in the 2022/23 financial year, which involved tiling of the swimming pool walls.
“Renovations were to continue in the new financial year in July 2023, however, the labour unrest affected the schedule and as a result, repairs which included revamping of the swimming pool floor only started on November 8,” said Mashigo.
He said due to the pool being old it was affected by leaks, and wall and tile cracks.
“The teams had to extensively fix the leaks, and their work included tiling the pool walls, revamping and sandblasting the pool floor to remove the old surface and repairing all old cracks on the floor.
They tiled the swimming pool lane lines in black and on both sides of expansion joints with white tiles to hold expansion joints in place.
They also had to install new expansion joints to prevent the pool from leaking water.”
Mashigo said the delays were due to product shortage challenges.
“The city would like to apologise for the delays in completing the project in the estimated time frame. There was a shortage of products that were needed to sandblast, and no time frame was given by the service provider because the product is scarce.”
He said some of the work done involved:
– Applying a primer layer between tiles before the final layer of Marblite was applied.
– Applying the Marblite layer between tiles as the final layer.
– Refilling the swimming pool with water the day after Marblite was applied – a process that takes three days.
He said the renovation work was needed because no maintenance work had been done over many years.
“The public can now return to the pools during scorching weather to cool down.”
The pool also has renovated ablution facilities, a tuck shop and a paddling pool.
Swimmers will be in safe hands as swimming and life-saving instructors are present at the facility.
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