Pool filling up for summer
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald By Thursday morning the pool will be full of water and by mid-June there will be kids playing on the pool toys, but on Monday city workers (from left) Clayton Bray, Tom Moschner and Jimmy McEachran were installing the climbing nets on a pool slide.
MOSES LAKE — Think of filling that backyard wading pool with a garden hose. Just on a much, much bigger scale.
In this case the wading pool is the Moses Lake municipal pool, and the garden hose is a section of 6-inch PVC pipe attached to a 3-inch water line. It’s pumping out a lot of water, but that’s a big pool. Roland Gonzalez is in charge of pool maintenance, and he estimated the pool at the Surf ‘n Slide water park holds about 750,000 gallons of water.
Okay. This is going to take a while.
“It takes us three days,” Gonzalez said, about 36 hours total over the three days. The water was turned on Monday afternoon and “we let it run all night” Monday, and all day Tuesday. Wednesday morning the pool is topped off by running water into the gutters and filling the underground tank, called a vault. The tank is crucial to recirculating the water, once people start jumping in the pool.
There are, of course, other attractions at the pool. They don’t take three-quarters of a million gallons of water, but they aren’t the backyard wading pool either. The Lazy River requires about 80,000 gallons to carry people around the circle, and the Flow Rider, which simulates the surfing experience, takes another 30,000 gallons. The splash pad, the spot for little kids to play in the water, uses about 3,000 gallons. Each has their own circulation and underground tank system.
Crews actually start prepping the pool in early April – sweeping out debris and dirt that’s accumulated over the winter, painting and patching where needed. Painting and patching are a fall activity also, and parts of the facility have to be insulated to protect them from possible weather damage during the winter. “We’re actually doing bits and pieces (of maintenance) all year round,” Gonzalez said. “There’s maintenance all the way through.”
Some of the pool toys will have a new look – the octopus slide was orange last year, and now it’s green. (That’s actually the original color from 1994, Gonzalez said.) The mushroom shower and the second slide, the fiberglass rocks dubbed “Treasure Island,” have been refurbished also.
Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.