Aquatic centre repairs could cost ratepayers

The Selwyn Aquatic Centre. Photo: Supplied
The Selwyn Aquatic Centre. Photo: Supplied
Ratepayers may have to fork out an extra $5 a year per property to cover unplanned maintenance work at a Canterbury aquatic centre.

The work is required after some of the fastenings in the Selwyn Aquatic Centre ceiling were sent away for sampling and found to be cracking.

A report presented to Selwyn district councillors at a meeting last week outlined the required work.

The cost of replacing the fastenings is expected to be $690,000. The additional work will be undertaken on top of the scheduled extension of the centre. 

The fastenings will be covered by funds already allocated to undertake scheduled maintenance as part of the main contract for the extension project. But that scheduled maintenance work is expected to cost $785,000 on top of the fastenings and will now need to be funded by other means.

The report said: “Although $690,000 of the maintenance is provided by existing budgets, the balance of $785,000 will need to be funded over time from an increase to the various aquatic centre rates.

“Simplistically, if the $785,000 is funded over a 10-year maintenance cycle, the pool’s rates would need to lift by $5 per property from July 1, 2021.”

The options for increasing the pool rates will be considered as part of the 2021-2031 Long Term Plan and will be part of public consultation on the plan.

The cracked fastenings were discovered in November last year, when a brief power outage at the aquatic centre resulted in the air sock collapsing in on itself.

The report said: “Although the power came on again, the building management system that runs activities such as the air sock did not restart.

“Instead there was a delay and when the air sock did inflate, it caused a huge amount of air to rush through the system at one time, causing a number of fastenings to shear and break where the air sock was attached to the roof.”

The metallurgist who sampled the fastenings found that all that were tested had stress corrosion cracking associated with any exposed surface, the report said.

“The sampling report highly recommended that the fastenings are replaced with urgency to avoid unexpected sudden failures.

“This result was obviously of a major concern because there are many different fixings and fastenings in the existing ceiling system.”

For the work to be undertaken, the pools must be empty and closed to swimmers.

“To avoid these issues, it has been concluded that the work will be carried out of hours for five days a week on a rope access system. This work is estimated to take around eight weeks to complete,” the report said.

Work on replacing the fastenings is expected to be completed in June.