By Dylana Milobar

City staff applying for grant to improve Canada Games Aquatic Centre efficiency

Apr 7, 2019 | 3:27 PM

KAMLOOPS — As part of the effort to boost efficiency at the Canada Games Aquatic Centre, Kamloops city staff are headed to council on Tuesday (April 9) for a resolution supporting their provincial grant application.

The city has applied to the Clean BC Community Fund to get more money to fund energy efficiency improvements for the pool, as part of the Canada Games Infrastructure Improvement Project.

The overall project, which will be discussed at Tuesday’s council session, seeks to replace and repair any parts of the building which have gone past, or are nearing the end of their functionality.

If Clean BC grants the request, Sustainability Services Supervisor Glen Cheetham says the city could receive upwards of $450,000 towards the implementation of energy efficiency measures.

The plan is to spend $9.1 million on the Canada Games Aquatic Centre improvements, with $2.9 million of that coming from the City’s Community Works Fund.

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Provided the grant is approved, the extra $458,000 for the energy efficiency facet would mean only the leftover $5.7 million would be paid off through debt.

“Any grant money received would help offset any debt that the project would incurr,” Cheetham explains, “So the grant money in effect would reduce the debt towards this project.”

The infrastructure improvements needed to get the pool building more energy efficient would be different than what upgrades would be done at other civic buildings.

“It would look at a number of measures, including improving the thermal performance of the building envelopes,” He explains, “So more insultation, better glazing to make that more efficient. And it would also look at using some technologies to improve the mechanical system. Including heat recovery ventilation.”

Cheetham says the humidity of indoor swimming pools is managed by exhausting a lot of the air into the atmosphere. The problem is, with that air goes a lot of heat energy.

“So heat recovery ventilation would recover that heat and put it back into the system, which would then reduce the amount of natural gas you would consume for heating purposes.”

Getting a resolution from council is a requirement of the Clean BC application, and Cheetham says after that, they expect to hear from Clean BC within a couple of months.

All of the improvements for the pool wouldn’t begin until at least 2020.