City Hall Pool on schedule to make a splash in the summer

Construction crews have been working six days a week to get city hall's state-of-the-art pool ready for this summer.

The wading pool area has been under a massive tent and surrounded by temporary fencing since last summer.

"The big pour today is a big milestone for us," said Eugene Gyorfi, program manager of city hall civic precinct

"I know there's been a lot of questions about what's under the tent — it's not potatoes. We've been getting ready to pour this concrete slab."

The pool bottom requires a continuous pour of 290,000 litres of concrete. The pour started at 7 a.m. Wednesday and will continue in 20-minute intervals with concrete trucks arriving until 8 p.m.

The pool, which costs $13.4 million after an extra $3.6 million approved by council last July, is designed to be more accessible and safer for public use.

Surge tank

The pool's depth will be 15 centimetres. Entry to the pool will be a gradual slope rather than the stairs.

Also the new pool's design comes with a surge tank, which allows officials to recycle, clean or empty the water when needed.

"It's actually where we're going to store all the water for the fountain and each night we can actually drain the fountain in about an hour at the end of the day," Gyorfi said.

"So from a safety and security perspective we don't have standing water as we did with the old design."

The ability to drain the pool water will also give the city the opportunity to host events in the pool area at night.

Crews have been working six days a week, 16 hours a day to complete the project which Gyordi insists is on time, despite the significant amount of work left to do.

"We're on schedule to be finished this summer," he said.

The tent covering the site will come off in the coming weeks as crews begin the next stage of construction, installing 45,000 granite tiles.