Case Study – Making Waves

Projects

Making Waves

A professional swim school whose owners and staff have decades of experience, Making Waves is Scotland’s largest independent swimming school.

Making Waves’ innovative instructional programme has taught more than 18,000 children learn how to swim confidently. Its continued success required a new purpose-built facility to be constructed in 2017 to ensure the increasing volume of students could learn in both safety and in comfort.

This success has not changed the ethos of the school with having fun being the founding principle of lifelong learning in swimming safely and confidently. Being a family business, having Tom and Nicola running the project ensures that coaching is delivered in a personal and unique way for each student. Each swimming coach is chosen not only for their skill and experience but also their fun-loving nature and caring personality.

Catering for babies, adults and children and conveniently located in East Kilbride, this tailor-made facility has been designed from the outset with families in mind. From the large changing rooms to the child-friendly showers and from the open viewing area to the warm and clean pool, it has all been laid out with learning and comfort in mind.

The installation at Making Waves

With a an extremely low ceiling height, a solution was needed to bring warm and even air flow into the pool area. Prihoda’s ellipse duct offered a perfect solution and, after initial quote gathering with several Fabric Ducting suppliers, Prihoda was chosen for our enthusiasm for the project, our creative technical solution, and our competitive pricing.

This project presented several quite challenging problems. The air volume for the space was quite high and yet the ceiling height was very low. To complicate matters further, the room is landlocked within a bigger events building so it exists without any external walls. The issue this created was that cool internal corridors just the other side of the blockwork wall structure could create condensation issues on the internal walls of the swimming pool.

Additionally, the ceiling structure needed to be completely covered by an impermeable membrane to save the structure of the building from not only the effects of the humidity but also potential reactions between atmospheric chlorine and the building materials. This necessitated that all suspension points would need to be installed prior to the membrane ceiling being installed and the whole ducting system being fitted after this. The danger with this approach was that some suspension points wouldn’t be positioned correctly and that accidentally puncturing a taught stretched ceiling membrane was a very real possibility.

To overcome these problems, Prihoda designed an ellipse fabric duct system with main branches being 1,300mm wide but only 350mm deep. The system was designed as a loop around the edges of the pool so it had to meet accurately from opposite ends of the pool. This was done partly so that the walls could be included in the air pattern in order to heat them – thus reducing any condensation issues, but also so that conforming to CDM regulations for the future maintenance of the system could be achieved by allowing all parts to be accessible without having to access them from within the pool. The entire system was installed using the Prihoda 4m long reinforced suspension system so that there was a minimum of suspension points through the impermeable ceiling membrane.

The Result

The system looks great and works really well, providing warm air in and around the pool area without any undue velocity or discomfort for the users. The Prihoda system solved multiple problem because it was all made to order – and it was completely customised to create the correct shapes and air patterns required by the installation, all in a practical and aesthetic fashion. Making Waves also opted to have their branding printing subtly in two areas on the ducting putting the finishing touch to a fantastic installation.

Further contact?

We really enjoyed this installation. Prihoda have custom designed many swimming pool HVAC systems but this one had some “interesting” technological challenges which constrained some of our options whilst placing additional demands above and beyond those of a typical pool environment. Innovation has always been one of our core skills and, in typical Prihoda fashion, some out-of-the-box thinking led to a pleasing and successful design and installation.

To discover what we can do for you and to speak our team about the range of fabric ducting systems we offer together with our additional technical services for end users and for specifiers, please call us on 0121 320 2496 or email info@prihoda.co.uk if you’re in the UK. Our ROI customers should call 01 961 0031 or email info@prihoda.ie.

About Prihoda

Founded by Mr Zdenek Prihoda in 1994, the company employs over 250 people in three factories in the Czech Republic to serve the European market. The company also operates factories in China and Mexico for Asian and American markets. We supply to over 60 countries a year and we are the only company in the sector to use 100% post-consumer recycled material in our fabric ducting.