Quantifying the Influence of the Pool Cover on the Water Evaporation Rate in Indoor Swimming Halls

Swimming facilities are a complex building category that require precise planning in the design phase for optimal operation. This includes the use of building performance simulation tools for estimating energy use and designing the energy plant. The main challenge in a swimming facility is handling the water surface and the phenomena of evaporation rate. In the design phase, this must be estimated by empirical relations and assumptions. For occupied and unoccupied pools, several empirical relations are presented in the literature.

This is not the case for pools using a moveable floor, a feature with increasing prevalence, as a pool cover. This article presents measurements and analysis of the evaporation rate for an indoor swimming pool in Norway. This includes the evaporation rate with the use of a moveable floor in the swimming pool as a pool cover. It is found that the evaporation rate for an unoccupied indoor pool can be reduced by up to 70% with the use of this feature. This entails that the correction factor of the ASHRAE-equation can be reduced from 0.5 to 0.15 when this feature is activated.