The distinctive scent of chlorine will once again permeate the air of the Homestead Aquatic Facility in Chapel Hill as the popular public swimming destination returns to normal operations next week.

According to Jim Orr, the local director of parks and recreation, two phases of repairs were initiated at the facility after staff members reported changes to typical water consumption levels.

“There was a huge spike in the months of August and it continued,” he recalled. “Our staff knew that there was some water loss over time.”

The first phase of repairs involved an extensive series of tests performed by outside consultants to determine if either of the two pools in the facility had sustained structural damage.

“The outside consultants drained both pools […] and they did a variety of tests of the different lines, the return lines, all the plumbing they could get to,” Orr explained.

A cracked expansion joint and other structural defects were uncovered by those tests, but the repairs that followed would fail to keep the facility from hemorrhaging water.

“We thought with all of that repaired, that was it, so we filled the pools back up,” Orr mentioned. “Overnight, the lap pool dropped six to seven inches right away, so we knew that we may have gotten some of the leaks, but the major leak was still out there.”

That setback prompted the hiring of another outside consultant to undertake a second phase of repairs along with a thorough analysis of the deck surfaces surrounding the pools.

“They were doing the deck leak detection; they were also doing the removal of the deck section where the leak was identified,” Orr noted. “They found the leak; they repaired the leak.”

Those repairs were successful, but Orr had a difficult choice to make when that contractor gave him an eight-week lead time on closing a hole in the pool deck that was made to fix other issues.

“Knowing that we didn’t want to wait another eight weeks, we contacted the health department because we knew that we were going to have to have the pools reinspected,” he relayed. “[We wanted] to tell the individual what the situation was, show the inspector what our thought was, ‘Could we open with a certain modification and protection around the hole in the deck?'”

With that protection in place, inspectors have agreed to allow swimmers to resume their aquatic activities at the facility on April 17 if it passes tests that are scheduled to occur this week.

Photo by Ryan P./Google+.

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