BELLA COOLA, B.C. — Chandos Construction recently announced it has completed the full revamp of the Bella Coola Centennial Pool, replacing an aging 1967-era facility with a new and improved place for members of the remote central coast community to enjoy.
“For us, this pool is the beating heart of the community in the summer,” said Jayme Kennedy, chair and area C director for the Central Coast Regional District (CCRD) in a statement.
According to a release, Bella Coola is reachable only by long winding roads, ferry connections or small aircraft, meaning it presented atypical construction challenges.
The project required demolition of the aging Centennial Pool, which had deteriorated significantly after a heavy rainfall event several years earlier. Community members, along with CCRD, rallied to secure funding to replace the facility.
“The old pool was in very poor condition,” said Graham Pirie, senior superintendent at Chandos Construction. “The community and the regional district came together and raised the money to replace it.”
To overcome the region’s limited supply chains and long transportation timelines, Chandos worked with Carscadden Architecture to shift from traditional cast-in-place concrete construction to a prefabricated stainless-steel pool system manufactured by Berndorf Baderbau in Czechia, the release describes.
This allowed the basin to be fabricated overseas while site preparation was underway.
The stainless-steel system was also selected for its performance in Bella Coola’s unique environmental conditions. Located within a 200-year floodplain, the region experiences periodic groundwater surges that create challenges for traditional concrete construction, the release adds.
“Pools are designed to hold water, but here, we also had to manage water pushing in from the backside,” said Dominic Ries, director of technical solutions, pre-construction at Chandos. “Stainless steel eliminated permeability concerns and offered far better long-term resilience against groundwater saturation and against traditional damp-proofing on concrete swimming pool tanks.”
Compared with a conventional concrete pool, the installation was measured in weeks rather than the months required with a conventional concrete swimming pool pour schedule.
The stainless-steel basin achieved a 68 per cent reduction in embodied COâ‚‚e and prevented the consumption of more than 20,000 litres of diesel that would otherwise have been required for winter heating and hoarding.
Maximizing local involvement was central to the project’s delivery, the release notes, as the only concrete supplier in the region is operated by the Nuxalk Nation. Transitioning to stainless steel ensured the project aligned with the community’s available production capacity. Local concrete placers, framers and general labourers were engaged throughout construction.
In order for the project to remain on schedule, extensive planning was essential as mobilization windows of 14 to 21 days were required for any equipment or materials.
Flat packing the stainless-steel pool into sea containers and trucking it along the steep and winding road into the Bella Coola Valley required careful orchestration between Chandos, trade partners and logistics teams, the release explains.
The durability of the stainless-steel material and the ease of basin maintenance were also important requirements for the community.
It needed to be able to get the pool open quickly without typical spring pool coating touch-ups or any tile work that sometimes occurs with outdoor swimming pools, and shut it down quickly if an early freeze hits in the fall.
“This pool is designed to freeze over without causing damage to the basin or piping,” says Ries.
The new pool was completed one month ahead of schedule.
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