Hit another big milestone..... Swimming from Salt Lake City to Moscow (A virtual stage swim obviously, which includes every stinkin' swim I've logged) Haha.
And yesterday's open water swim in the GSL was 44 degrees F! Sam went with me and we both swam from the boat ramp to the outside of the marina opening and back. About 7 minutes. Sam swam waterpolo style the whole way. Something you can get away with in the GSL.
Jim came too and got in and was in the water longer than we were. He's amazing that guy!
Installation is not easy. After setting up the frame I had hire help for the rest.
Customizable
Honesty/Competence of customization sales
Reliable
Coping panels warp in the heat of the sun.
1) Power - I have a high performance Endless Pool. There are four models with varying power. The model I went with is the second best with a maximum current of :56/100 yard. The pool I did my test swim in prior to my purchase was an "Original" model, which is the lowest pool in terms of power. I was able to swim at its maximum speed without much issue. (1:05/100 yd pace).
The High Performance model is more than enough for my needs. In fact, my workouts are for distance rather than speed, so to be honest I rarely include 1:05 pace in my workout, although its nice to have the option to be able to train a sprinter in my pool, should the need arise.
2) Controls - the pool is controlled either manually through a remote control, or using an app that can be run on your phone/tablet, called Fit@Home. This is actually an "extra" that you have to buy. It cost me an additional $400, and worth every penny. The app allows me to program a workout with up to 20 different sets, for controlling speed & duration, and do intervals. The app keeps track of the distance of your workout so you can know relatively accurately how far your actual distance was. Otherwise manually controlling this with the remote, would be extremely boring and you wouldn't be able to get the overall distance. You do have to be on a wireless network for this to work, so while you don't necessarily need internet access, you do need to be on the same wireless network with your phone, that your pool is connected to.
In addition to the current flow control, I got the add-on for controlling the temperature remotely using a different app on my phone. The app is called in.touch 2. Although I don't really mess with the temperature, it does allow me to turn the underwater lights on through the app (which I rarely use), as well as monitor whether the pump/heater are currently being used. This add-on cost an extra $295, which I would say is unnecessary. It's neat, but not really worth the money IMO. If you intend to increase/decrease the temperature for different swimmers often, maybe. But the time it takes to increase/decrease the temperature would take too long for it to be useful. It takes many hours for temp to increase/decrease depending on how cold/hot the air temp is. And the water temp can't be decreased mechanically, only heated. The only way the water temp can decrease is if the air temperature is lower than the desired water temperature.
In my case, I keep the water temperature at 70 degrees F at all times! This is too cold for any of my non-competitive swimming family members. In the summer, I couldn't get the water temp this low in my back yard. Being exposed to the sun, in the early summer was making the water temp rise way up to 85+ and that was totally unacceptable. I bought a large 15x30 tent to shade the pool (and the hot tub), but even in the shade it wasn't dropping below 85 degrees.
I was desperate. I went to the grocery store and bought 80 pounds of ice. That only dropped the temp by 1 degree! I did some homework on the topic, and read that the most impactful thing I could do to lower the water temperature was to build a waterfall system, to aerate the water. So I rigged a pump system using a submersible 1/2 HP water pump. This is the same pump I use to empty the pool. It is supposed to empty 2000 Gallons per hour which is way too fast for my waterfall. So I hooked up the pump to this Variable Speed Controller which would allow me to control the amount of water the pump would output.
I connected the pump to a hose and connected it to the tent legs leading to the top of the inside of the tent so the water would fall down right back into the pool. Then I placed it near the front of the pool, so I could cover it, except for the 3 feet of exposure for the pool water to pump out, and back in. I had a powerful fan also flowing through the air into the stream of water to increase the air flow going into the water.
This worked fantastic! I was able to maintain a water temp of 73-74 in the middle of summer where the temps reached over 100 degrees. In the early fall I was able to uninstall this waterfall system easily and the air temperature outside was low enough to not require any heating.
Update (April 18, 2020)
I noticed while swimming that the current was spontaneously getting faster, then slower, then turn off. I was worried something was seriously wrong with the computer running the system. I was brainstorming the issue then thought I should check the manual controller which was in a waterproof box on the table with the swim gear.
I unscrewed the back of the manual control and the entire thing was totally corroded from water damage. I removed the two corroded batteries from the controller, and then the pool operated like normal. Whew! I never use the manual control, so no big deal. But you'd think a control to a pool would be fairly waterproof. Not so.
Also, over the past month, I've opened up the pool to Salt Lake Open Water (SLOW) Club members who want to still swim while the Covid-19 pandemic is happening. Community pools are closed. With the endless pool being outside, accessible through a side gate, it seemed like a good way to help people that still want to get in a swim. So the pool was made available for reservations, and typically gets 5-6 swimmers per day at about an hour each. Lots of use!
Swimming during winter with the tent walls
installed.
I was looking at the electrical costs. I have a Sense electricity monitor, so I was wondering what the costs are with running and heating this pool. I found that depending on the speed of the current, the usage ranges from 2-4kph. My average kph cost is about 9 cents. So when 3 different swimmers swim for one hour it will cost me about $1.00 for electricity.
Heating is about 400 watts when it is on. In the summertime, that is not at all. In the wintertime, according to Sense, the heater kicked on 4 times at night for about 15 minutes each. I didn't check the monitor for heating during the day, but to be conservative let's say the heater goes on for 2 hours a day. That's still less than 10 cents a day to heat in the winter months.
Granted I kept the pool in an enclosed tent throughout the winter to keep the wind chill out. The temps were about 10 degrees warmer in the tent than outside air with the hot tub also being in there.
Video on getting the pool setup to swim in the early morning:
I have many more details on the things I would do different, so if you're interested in those details, just ask me.
