A swimming pool for the Fröbel School
The children at Friedrich-Ebert-Schule and Hafenschule probably had no idea what a sensation they were involved in last week: They were allowed to test out Offenbach's first new public swimming pool in decades as part of their PE lessons.
The 13.85 x 8.15 meter pool is attached to the new Fröbelschule building on Mühlheimer Straße and is available exclusively for school lessons. The client is GBO Gemeinnützige Baugesellschaft, a subsidiary of Stadtwerke Offenbach. It has commissioned its sister company OPG Offenbacher Projektentwicklungsgesellschaft mbH to realize the project. The entire building is rented by the City of Offenbach. Classes are due to start here after the summer vacation. Pupils from the Fröbelschule, an all-day school with a focus on mental and physical-motor development, will be able to use the pool for therapy sessions, while Offenbach primary school children will be able to swim here for the first time as part of their PE lessons. There is a separate entrance for the non-school classes so that they do not have to walk across the actual school grounds.
"Until now, children starting swimming lessons at the city's elementary school could only use the pool at the Marienschule for their first swimming strokes," says Offenbach's Head of Schools Paul-Gerhard Weiß. "However, as Offenbach is a growing city and more and more children are starting school here, the capacity at the Marienschule is now exhausted. We are therefore very pleased that, as the school authority, we are now taking over the swimming pool integrated into a school building. This means that a second pool can be used for swimming lessons with classes."
"Despite Offenbach's financial difficulties, this is a very important investment for which there was a good opportunity as part of the new school building," says treasurer Martin Wilhelm. "We want to stop the dangerous trend of fewer and fewer boys and girls being able to swim. Every primary school child in Offenbach should have the chance to learn it in class."
System cleans water fully automatically
The water treatment technology is being tested until the swimming pool can be used regularly. "As only school lessons take place here, the swimming pool doesn't need a lifeguard, either to keep swimmers safe or to clean the water," says Daniela Matha, Managing Director of the municipal utility subsidiaries GBO, OPG and GBM Service GmbH. "The swimming pool technology runs independently. It measures how many foreign substances are brought in, then adds the necessary chemicals and thus permanently cleans the water. Only the cleaning of the pool floor and gutters has to be done manually." However, this work requires very little effort during operating hours.
The early swimming hours last week were part of the so-called adjustment operation. Their main purpose was to check the swimming pool technology and also to show whether the swimming lesson runs smoothly, from changing to blow-drying hair. Before the two school classes were allowed into the water, however, the health authority and an expert were already there to check the system technology and water quality. Black paint was poured into the underground tanks so that they could see whether the dark water was flowing through every corner of the pool. This happened even faster than required and after just one hour, the system had filtered all the color pigments out of the water again.
"The entire system works so efficiently that only a small amount of water is required," says Markus Herdt, engineer and project manager at OPG about the resource-saving system. The basin holds 120 cubic meters of water, which is treated in the basement in three storage tanks with a total capacity of 53 cubic meters. Only around eleven cubic meters are exchanged twice a week. Before this water flows into the sewer, however, the chlorine is filtered out, among other things. "What we actually discharge is so little and is pre-cleaned so well in the filter system that we don't even need a discharge permit for it; we just had to report it to the regional council in Darmstadt as part of the coordination of the entire swimming pool technology," says the project manager.
The young test swimmers were enthusiastic after the swimming lesson and are now looking forward to regular swimming lessons in the next school year. Their wish that there should be a bench in the swimming pool will also be fulfilled by then.