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SPN DEC 2012 MovingFloors
private clients. Each floor is tailor-made to the exact requirements of the individual and the company are able to provide project managers (if required) to see the installation through from concept to realisation. They are a team of young and dynamic, multilingual engineers and designers with international backgrounds and an in-depth experience in the swimming pool industry. They work with high end swimming pool construction companies who are familiar with the capabilities and quality of their product and increasingly, with architects who are recommending a moveable floor to clients. The Hydrofloors® system is near invisible, flexible, rapidly adaptable, safe and complies with relevant national safety standards. The client chooses the pre-selected depths that they want on the control panel and can have as many or as few as they want. Once depth options have been set, the floor height of the pool may be elevated to any of the pre-selected water depths, such as wading depth for children or a depth suited to those with special needs. The highest elevated position of the floor is that of the pool surround, at which point the water is out of sight beneath the floor and the entire area becomes totally safe and secure, allowing the area to be utilised for a different use.
When the pool is fully closed, energy costs for heating are greatly reduced.
A Hydrofloors® moveable floor structure is comprised stainless steel beams that are calculated precisely to the pool size requirements, allowing for a strong load capacity. A higher load capacity at the surface level (350kg/m2) is achieved by using lock in pins sliding in the pool shell walls. Depending on the size, the pool structure will need to be between 700 and 900mm deeper than the swimming depth to accommodate the floatation tanks and operating mechanisms. Under the structure between the main stainless steel beams, they install buoyancy packs; these are designed to make the whole floor float in the highest position. The floor surface finish consists of 3mm thick stainless steel plates and can be finished in a variety of ways, according to the design requirements. The complete structure is buoyant and pulled down via cables and a pulley system with water based hydraulic cylinder to the desired depth.
Hydrofloors® most recent projects have been in London, Verbier, Geneva and Brussels and rather than being affected by the economic downturn, they are actually experiencing an increased demand for their floors as clients and architects look for new ways of solving problems of space particularly in city situations. Far from the cost of these installations being an obstacle to overcome, clients are seeing them as a way to increase the value of their property by doubling a room’s square metreage.
www.swimmingpoolnews.co.uk
The Clapham One Leisure Centre features a 25m six-lane main pool with 2.5m deep end and a separate learner pool – both pools contain Aquaterr moveable floor systems from F T Leisure
“Games rooms or entertainment areas for homes have now become realities, so too have multi-use pools with better access for
the young and disabled and even additional sports halls for commercial facilities”
Alan Thorne, Manager of Hydrofloors® UK says: “The clients who are coming to us are often in an enviable financial position but they absolutely demand value and they value quality and with a Hydrofloors® moveable floor they get that. They are not just looking for state of the art technology behind the facades of their listed townhouses but a swimming pool that is both economic to run and that can be safely closed when not in use and turned into a function room when needed. Hydrofloors®can fulfil all of that plus add that extraordinary drama to a room when you see the transformation in reality.”
F T LEISURE FLOORS AND PLATFORMS FOR THE DISABLED
F T Leisure moveable floor systems are designed to be reliable, robust and safe. The moveable floor systems are of the flotation type with a 316L stainless steel structure, the surface of which is clad with 20mm thick polypropylene panels which have a non-slip finish suitable for wet barefoot. Buoyancy units are attached to the underside of the steel structure providing sufficient flotation to hold the weight of the
steel structure and the design bathing load of the pool. The floor is restrained via stainless steel cables diverted over a series of pulleys and exiting the pool tank onto the hydraulic operating system. F T Leisure offers both indirect and direct drive hydraulic operating systems. The operator controls the floor using a poolside touch-screen panel containing any number of pre-set depth positions; once a depth is selected, the hydraulics will activate and the floor will move at a speed of up to 500mm per minute.
With the introduction of the Equality Act, there is a requirement that all service providers make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to ensure that people with a disability have the same access as their able-bodied counterparts. In the case of access to swimming pools, this was typically achieved using a hoisting mechanism to lower the bather into the water. Feedback from disabled swimmers suggests that this is quite an undignified means of access and a more subtle solution was therefore required.
The Aquaterr Disabled Access Platform, designed and manufactured by F T Leisure, is a
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