The outdoor pools at San Antonio’s Northside Aquatics Center are being kept between 79.5 and 80.5 degrees for the U.S. National Championships this weekend, the meet hosts told coaches during Wednesday’s coaches’ meeting.
Addressing ongoing concerns about the temperature in San Antonio’s outdoor Northside Swim Center, with temperatures soaring toward 100, coaches were informed in today’s coaches’ meeting that the pool has the ability to both heat and cool, and that water temperatures at the brand new facility have been kept well within the acceptable limits.
Meet staff told coaches that during Junior Nationals, water was 79.5 degrees in the morning, and crept to just 80.5 degrees for the finals session. That’s well within the FINA 77-82.4 degree guidelines for pool water temperatures.
Also announced at the coaches’ meeting is that many of the proceeds from the meet’s fees, including those for parking, will go toward Viva Swim, a local San Antonio program designed to provide free swim lessons to children.
Hispanic children have been identified as a high-risk group for drowning, and according to the University of Memphis, roughly sixty percent of Hispanic/Latino children cannot swim. San Antonio has the 4th-largest Hispanic population in the country, with an estimated 807,000 (61.2% of the city) identifying as such.
100 degrees and humid. Phew. Not sure how you folks can stand that – you’d never get me out of the pool or AC indoors. I imagine hitting 79.5 degree water in those conditions makes the first few strokes energetic?!?
Geothermal system can hear and cool.
Texas A&M uses a chiller for their outdoor pool. Of course, it’s much smaller than NISD. But it would routinely be 77-79 while it was 98+ in College Station.
It’s called a heat pump. And I use an aerator on my 25 yard backyard pool in AZ. It’s just a sump pump with a fanned piece of PVC pipe. It pumps volumes of water at night. Unassisted my pool would be 90 degrees plus. With the sump pump I can keep it below 80 and have to occasionally turn it off. In AZ a lot of competition pools turn on huge (much larger than mine) aerators at night to get to just the right temperature.
Actually, many smaller units now come with heating and cooling modes. I know our facility is looking into large scale units to help regulate our temperatures (3 pools, 1.49 million gallons). We currently have an aeration system that works well, but its effectiveness is predicated on many factors including dew point, humidity and temperature. Of course coverage and drop are important and essential factors as well. I’m not sure what they are running in San Antonio.
With Nationals starting tomorrow and Worlds still going, this is going to be a crazy few days trying to watch everything while reading all of the SwimSwam stories and postings! What a wonderful few days it will be!!!!!!!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
Hurricane harryp checking in,
attempt to boil egg in competition pool ended in success
am now eating boiled pool egg
im done now
The water temps were great last week. Hospitality was horrible. If anyone from San Antonio is reading this, please provide water (or clean water bottles) and gatorade for the coaches and officials.
Were you at a different JR Nats? I had all the cold drinking water I needed.
Maybe I should clarify and say either BOTTLED water or CLEAN water bottles so that we could use the athlete’s jugs.
Or even cups for the water jugs
Do what we did in the 1970s and drop blocks of ice into the pool at night.