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Swimmers do laps March 21, 2018, at the Twin Falls City Pool.

TWIN FALLS — Thursday is the last day swimmers will be able to use Twin Falls City Pool for about a month. The pool will be closed from Friday until early March for repairs and installation of a new pool membrane liner.

The pool’s surface is plaster, and typically the plaster is repaired and resurfaced every 10 years.

Aquatics Director John Pauley has managed City Pool since 2008, and was involved in the plaster replacement the last time it was done in 2009.

“Plaster is an expensive material right now,” Pauley said. “We priced some plaster and that was very expensive.”

With recent increases in the price of construction materials, the estimate for plaster replacement of the pool lining was more than four-times the price paid in 2009, which was around $100,000.

Pauley had heard of some municipal aquatics facilities that had used PVC membrane liners, and decided to look in to it. Based on feedback from other facilities that are using a similar membrane, Pauley said the PVC membrane should be as durable and have the same lifespan as plaster, if not longer.

The city has contracted with RenoSys to install a PVC liner for a price matching what it cost to install plaster in 2009.

“When it came to budgeting time we decided this was the path we wanted to go down, just because the lifespan is very comparable to plaster,” Pauley said. “This makes a lot of sense not just from a facility maintenance stand point but a fiscal standpoint.”

The membrane fits into the budget, and Pauley said it has some added benefits over plaster.

“As plaster gets older get gets more brittle and it breaks, and we have some areas in where there’s some plaster failures,” Pauley said. “We don’t anticipate seeing that with a PVC membrane as long as it doesn’t get ripped from human error.”

According to Pauley, the surface of the membrane will be textured with grip, but won’t be as rough as the current plaster surface. Lane markings and tees for competitive swimming will be part of the PVC instead of painted.

The pool will be drained of its 500,000 gallons starting Friday, a process that takes several hours. The following week, Parks and Recreation workers will make minor plaster repairs to prepare the surface for the membrane. The membrane will then be installed by RenoSys, which will place the PVC pool floor in strips and bond the seams together to make a waterproof seal.

Pauley said mid-winter is a good time of year to close for a month to drain the pool. Although the pool generally sees higher use in February and March, the high school swim teams have completed their seasons.

“We have five high schools that swim here in the fall,” Pauley said. Public use of the pool starts to build up over spring break, when the facility sees a definite build-up to summer season.

Other maintenance and repairs will be done during the closure, like cleaning the pool gutters and replacing the sand that’s used to filter and clean the pool water throughout the year. Pool staff will also use the time to do a lot of cleaning, like cleaning the inside surface of the bubble that covers the pool from October through May.

During the closure, the locker rooms will be getting a slight renovation as well, with a similar membrane being installed over the concrete floors to replace the current material, which is easily stained and has become brittle in areas, cracking and flaking apart.

The water source for the pool is geothermal, which comes out of the ground at a temperature between 70 and 80 degrees. The pool uses boilers to warm the water to 84 degrees. The system uses less power than heating a traditional water source.

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Swimmers do laps March 21, 2018, at the Twin Falls City Pool.

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