Moria Dailey
Published: January 9, 2006
After being closed for nearly 15 months, the PJC pool has reopened with a new paint job and a brand new roof.
“The worst of the damage by far was that large portions of the roof that were gone – gone to the point that you could see through them; some buildings had part of the outer layer gone, but with the pool, the entire thing was gone,” Walt Winter, PJC’s physical plant director, said.
The damage to the roof was the cause of interior damage to the pool and pool housing, including damage to the paint, the pool itself, the pool lining and the pool deck Winter said. There was also debris in the pool, but Winter said that wasn’t a big problem.
Winter said the repairs took as long as they did because of problems with the insurance company.
“That took forever,” he said, in reference to coming to an agreement with the insurance company over the price of the repairs.
After an agreement was reached, a contractor had to be hired and the new roof installed. Winter said that took about two months, but the new roof on the building is stronger and much better suited to withstand the winds and potential damage from a hurricane.
“The roof originally had lightweight concrete panels and a single sheet of plywood. It was a ‘membrane roof’,” Winter said, explaining that along with the pool building, all buildings on campus have been repaired and are now better suited to withstand hurricanes.
After the roof was repaired, PJC maintenance crews had to repair the interior of the building. They repainted the entire building and then drained the pool to remove debris and repair and clean the pool liner. They then began to refill the pool and adjust chemical levels.
“It took almost 2 weeks to get the water clear because some of the pipes had begun to rust and so when we started filling it, we were getting rusty water at first,” Winter said.
Many people are happy to see the pool open. Sally Menk, a member of the Master Swimmers, a group the uses PJC’s pool facilities to practice, said, “It was very hard to be without the pool for those 15 months. We were so happy to have the pool open again.”
She and other members of her team had been e-mailing and calling the president of PJC and “waiting for us [the team] to get back together.”
The Master Swimmers had been forced to relocate their practices to The Club in Gulf Breeze. Many members had not been able to make the drive to Gulf Breeze every morning, so their team suffered.
“The pool reopening had a huge impact – a lot of our swimmers weren’t able to get out to The Club (located in Gulf Breeze) and so it was nice for them all to be back together,” Coach Steven Fair said.
The pool is open to students as well as being used in several continuing education classes PJC is offering in the spring term. For pool hours, students can call 484-1311.