It's hard to believe we are inching up to the year anniversary of the Jayman Aquatic Centre.

Taking over full operations has been quite the learning curve for the management team of Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre (SLSFSC) but they are thankful for the public's patience. 

Robin Mitchell, General Manager of SLSFSC, shares he is aware of the public frustration when it comes to day-long closures; operating a community facility can at times be difficult when it comes to balancing the needs of members, drop-in guests, swim lessons, and various user groups. "From time to time we have to close a portion of the facility in order to meet those needs; be it a hockey tournament, curling bonspiel, soccer or wrestling tournament, or a swim meet. This happens over most city or municipal-run facility's as there is an obligation to look after the various people utilizing a multi-use centre."

Last weekend the pool was closed due to a swim meet and while you may have taken a peek and thought surely they could have accommodated members or drop-in, Mitchell says they need to comply with Fire Marshall regulations. While he would love to open up the other bodies of water that are not in use those regulations are in place for safety protocols."We have a maximum capacity of 350 bodies in the pool deck, that means the entire pool deck where all the bodies of water you walk past, plus the change rooms. We host about four swim meets a year and this was built and anticipated that we would host meets for the swim clubs and that is why it was built to a competition spec. With large meets, they typically have 250-400 participants plus 50 or 60 officials as well. The 350 set out by the Fire Marshall is the maximum number we can have, so while it might look like there are not many people down by the other bodies of water the total can only be 350."

The other couple closures members may have noticed is closures for 'Jayman Days' a bi-annual exclusive party which was part of their naming rights package as well as contaminated water incidents. "In the event, there is a contamination in the pool from someone having an accident we are mandated and regulated how we have to close and effectively clean the water body and depending on the type of accident it may be a shorter or longer period of time and we don't have any ability to get away from those regulations."

Just so you are prepared, you can expect to see the Jayman Aquatic Centre close for a period in September. "It is probably worth noting the aquatic venue will be closed a couple weeks to do the one-year inspection, fix a bunch of deficiencies in the various bodies of water, as well as drop the water lines to make sure the tiles from the original expansion and everything, is in place. We will have it all done, water back up and balanced and be able to go from there."

Although most large municipal pools typically close down for a short period, our's may be slightly longer just due to timing, shares Mitchell, as they will use the time to fix and replace things that have been defunct since the pool first opened. "Some of those pieces are; changing out some lights that didn't work since day one and painting in the change rooms, the paint just did not take and was not applied properly."

While Mitchell is hoping the work will be completed in a couple weeks, the reality is you never know what may be lurking below the surface. "Often times you can't see what the problem is until you've drained it and when you do that it may mean that you'll have to tackle a couple other issues that you just hadn't expected."

SLSFSC has already been working on a couple of ongoing warranty issues and is happy to report that both should be wrapped up by early next week. One said ongoing issue has been some of the pool bodies cool temperatures. "We are currently changing out some heat exchangers and adding some more heating plates. The main one we're looking to try and increase in temperature is our leisure pool. The addition of the plates will allow us to probably increase the water temperature by three more degrees and we've ordered additional plates that we will add in down the road, to pop that a little bit higher."

The other piece has been the various shades of green water seen in the warm water therapy, hot tub and leisure pool. "We are operating some really fancy, high tech filters in the basement that utilize various types of media to be able to filtrate the waters that come through and for the longest time both the contractors and our operations people have been knocking their heads against the wall trying to figure out and determine why it keeps going green. We send off the water samples on a weekly basis, as required by Alberta Health regulations and the water is always coming back with clear results, it has just been green as opposed to blue. Recently with the main contractor we have determined the filters in the basement for the warm water therapy, hot tub and leisure pool needed to have a portion of that media removed completely all the sand cleaned, some of the media put back with brand new media and you're starting to see if you're a swimmer that those bodies of water are turning from a definite shade of green to a nice blue shade. Now that the proper filtration/media has been put in place we're going to find we'll be able to operate with blue water in all four bodies from now on."

Lastly, interested to learn when the spray park will open? While Mitchell would love to see it run year round, Cochrane needs to see fairly stabilized temperatures with daytime highs averaging at least 18C. "We are aiming for mid-June, watch our WEBSITE for the grand opening that we'll put on for the spray park and hopefully we'll get some really hot summer days."

The spray park will once again only be accessible through the main building which means if you are not a member of the aquatic facility, you will need to pay. Mitchell says at this time there are no current plans to allow access from the outside. "We would have to have a check-in system and lock it off from the outside. So now people that come in would be stopped and couldn't go out to the spray park if we go that route as it would be too difficult to try and figure out who could come back in and who shouldn't and if we only had access from the outside we may have washroom issues."

As the first-anniversary approaches in July, Mitchell, says the management team at SLSFSC will have a year of data under their belts which will help them tweak programming, costs and how to best serve the community needs going forward.