Inside a 350,000-Gallon Commercial Pool

Welcome everyone to another episode of Pool People. Today, I'm here with Rory. He's the Director of Facilities at Pikes Peak Athletics Training Center. Rory, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be here. Yeah, I'd be curious to start by talking about, so listeners of this podcast will be people who service pools for a living. What are your responsibilities look like as the Director of Facilities of Pikes Peak Athletics Training Center?

Well, I'm certainly in charge of the pool cleaning and making sure our facilities are up to snuff and ready to go for our competitive teams, as well as our recreational swimming and things like that. But we do a little bit of a larger facility, of course. In addition to the pool, I also oversee the whole building. So we've got a 10,000 foot gym upstairs. We've got a physical therapy suite. Obviously, lobbies and things like that. We've got actually a trail system out on our grounds outside of the facility here. And a little bit of everything. We've got two pools, which is our primary aquatics focus, obviously.

We've got a Mirtha pool that's a 350,000 gallon, 25 yard by 25 meter. And then we have more of your traditional shotcrete pool, plaster finish on our smaller, what we call our teaching pool. And that one's about 30,000 gallons, so a much smaller pool where we do some more warm water swim lessons and physical therapy and things like that. So a little bit of everything here at the facility, but yeah, we're on the commercial side of the house. And what is the amount of staff required to service such a large facility, both pools and the other parts of the facility that you mentioned?

That's a great question. We've got a lot of different staffs and a lot of different teams. We're fortunate enough, I work with an outside vendor for our janitorial needs that comes in overnight and does that type of cleaning. But for the pools themselves, we actually have four CPOs on staff, including myself. So we've got a pretty good team and we actually are just bringing on a brand new maintenance specialist who will specialize in aquatics and be helping us with some of those deeper cleanings and bigger tasks for us. This facility opened in 2018, so we're still pretty new, but we're sort of starting to see some of those needs, those maintenance needs increase over time as well.

Okay, interesting. And then maybe you could give a little background for the listeners. You told me before this, but what is your background in pools and swimming and how did you come to the position you're in today? Yeah, so I kind of grew up in aquatics. I'm from South Florida originally and learned to swim as a survival skill. But then I had some pretty tough coaches and I was afraid to quit, so I just kept going with it. I swim all the way through college as I'm at the University of South Carolina from 2008 to 2012. I also competed at the Olympic trials. I swam the 100 freestyle back in 2008 in Omaha, so it was a great experience.

And I've gotten to compete internationally as well. Mario Nostrum circuit and Sette Coley, some of those big international meets, a lot of fun and learned a lot from some teammates who were much faster than I was, so I got to learn a lot from them. And then when I retired from swimming, I kind of got pulled into the coaching side while I was in grad school. And I was coaching with performance aquatics in South Florida. Kathleen Prindle, who is one of our USA Swimming board members and very active in American Swimming Coaches Association, worked with her for about eight years and we grew that team.

Over time, we had actually had an Olympian. We had several national record holders from different countries, things like that. It was a lot of fun. But then when COVID hit in 2020, we were kind of limited on the practices we were able to offer. I was also having some issues with skin cancer and stuff like that working outside in Florida. So I moved out here to Colorado and I have been working at Pikes Peak Athletics Training Center for the past six years. So I'm the director of facilities here. I cover facilities, code compliance, safety, oversee our lifeguard staff, service, maintenance, cleanliness, all that good stuff.

Okay, cool. So I'm curious to zoom in a little bit on the servicing of the two pools that you have and what those responsibilities look like and the four of you CPOs, how that works. Maybe you could give me a rough overview of those responsibilities. Yeah, we try to certainly keep at least one of our CPOs here at all times when we're open, but that's difficult to do. You know, being a commercial facility, we've got a lot of early morning and late evening training. So we're open from 5.30 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays. So it gives us a pretty short service window overnight to get some of our bigger stuff done.

So a lot of the stuff that most of our pool pros are doing in terms of cleaning, scrubbing, scum lines and keeping the pool nice and clean. Obviously, we have quite a bit of deck space that requires a lot of pressure washing and disinfecting, but our two pools are a little bit different. So again, talking about the Mirtha pool, our larger pool, it's a PVC membrane over a stainless steel shell. And that one is really, really cool. Does it take a whole lot of... I should qualify that. It doesn't take a whole lot of specialized maintenance. That pool does run on CO2, which is really, really nice for controlling our alkalinity.

I know probably some of the pool service technicians are using acid and maybe a few using CO2, but really big advantage in there. So we're always cleaning our systems out, making sure that our chemical feeds are operating appropriately, cleaning probes. Obviously, those things fell up pretty quickly when you're operating large commercial facilities like this. So cleaning our probes regularly, verifying our water quality measurements that the probes are giving us to make sure that they're accurately working and just monitoring water quality. So things like we would do normally filter cleaning and media changes, probably a little bit more frequent than some of the residential pools.

For example, our larger pool, we've got a Neptune Benson defender filter, which is a great filter. Same thing that they use at Olympic trials and stuff like that. But about once a month, we're going through and we're deep cleaning all of the components in that and doing media changes on that system, changing out pump tubes and things on our chlorine and acid feeds, center pumps, chlorine feeds, all that good stuff. Okay. Okay. Well, that's interesting. So how do you guys manage the shifts with the four of you CPOs?

We try to kind of push it throughout the day. My role tends to be more in the quieter times of the day. So I'll come in early in the morning, usually around four, and I'll be in until two-ish. So that way I'm here before we open. If there were any overnight issues, I'll come in a little bit earlier if we do have to take care of things that need to be done while the pool is shut down. And then our facility operations manager is kind of here during our high times. So he's here in the evenings. Of course, we have a lot of activity from three to seven p.m. when the kids are out of school, especially in the fall. So he's kind of here from that noon to eight p.m.

And he'll cover a lot of that as well. Our other two CPOs kind of float around throughout the day. And myself and the operations manager are on call at all times. So if there is an alarm with the pool, it goes to my phone at two in the morning. If the fire alarm goes off and it goes to the fire department, they are calling me in the middle of the night. So we're always available just in case anything comes up. Have you ever had any on-call situations? Oh, of course. Of course, yeah. Most recently, we had power outage, nothing major, but our filtration systems, they just need to be restarted.

And you've got to go ahead and check and make sure that the sanitizer and the pH are back in code before we open for the day. So I happened to get up to use the bathroom at about two in the morning, and I saw that alarm on my phone. So I knew it was time to get up and make sure I got in before we opened that morning. But it's happened quite often. We've had issues with fire systems malfunctioning as well. Somebody pulled one of our emergency exit doors, the alarm company calls me, things like that. Okay. Okay, I see. I see. And maybe you could explain. I haven't heard the difference between CO2 for alkalinity control and how that works.

Could you maybe explain why you chose that for the larger pool? Oh, absolutely. So CO2, it's actually for our pH control. So instead of using muriatic acid, CO2 is a great alternative to that because it does not have the same effect on alkalinity, right? So when you add muriatic acid into your pool, yes, you're lowering your pH, but you're also lowering your alkalinity at the same time. So when you use CO2 instead, you're lowering your pH and controlling that, but the effect on alkalinity is minimal. I actually wish that the owners, when they had built this facility, put CO2 on both pools.

But I'll kind of give you guys an example on our training pool that uses the CO2. I add bicarb maybe once or twice a year. And of course, on the other pool that's using acid, it's about once a week that I'm adding bicarb. Okay. Okay. And roughly, like, what is the equipment that each pool has? You gave me, like, brief overviews here and there. But could you, like, go line by line and talk about the different pieces of equipment that you need to maintain for each of the pools? Sure. So for our training pool, that 350,000 gallon, it was really, really well designed.

By Ireland Dean Designs, they did a fantastic job. So they actually built all the piping, the main drain and the skimmer to be throttled appropriately. So our skimmer line is full size and the main drain is about a third. So we get that great ratio of primarily surface water removal, less coming from the main drain. And that will drain into our surge tank. We've got about a 12,000 gallon surge tank and that stores basically the extra water during swim practice. So when you have 60, 70 kids get in the pool at one time, that displaces thousands of gallons of water.

So that'll actually sit in the surge tank during practice. And then when they all get out at the end of the workout, that water will flow back into the system and back out to the pool. From our surge tank, just like you guys would have in most of your residential pools, it flows out through our strainer basket and through our pump. We've got a pretty large taco pump, two horsepower pump. We pump about 1,000 to 1,200 gallons per minute for our training pool. So we've got a 12 inch piping on that pretty large. And then that line flows into our Neptune Benson Defender filter.

Fantastic filter, great water quality, especially if anybody is doing underwater video. That's when your DE and your regenerative DE filters become so advantageous. So we do a lot of underwater video for our swim teams and competition. And having that Neptune Benson Defender just does a fantastic job of making sure we can see all the way to the other side of the pool from underwater. That pool also has second, actually both of our pools have secondary disinfection. We've got an ETS UV system on both pools.

The one on the training pool is a little bit older, but it works really well. We actually just had a test with Colorado Springs Utilities. They did some UVT testing here in town. And our training pool water is cleaner than what comes out of the tap. So our filtration and our UV filter are doing a great job. And then we've got that set up to a 1.8 million BTU rate pack heater on the other end of that. For the feeding side, both our pools use center pumps. So center pumps are really, really easy for feeding our chlorine

and our acid, our liquid chemicals work super well. Of course, you've got to do the periodic maintenance on those, changing out pump tubes and things like that. But overall, those systems are super user friendly. All of our CPOs have been trained. We actually went to a training a couple of years ago up in Denver with Dodie from Stenner and great, great company to work with. They've been fantastic. So that's our chemical injection, and that's pretty much our larger pool. Small pool is much more typical of what you would see

in a hotel or a residential pool. We've got just a Pentair and Teleflow pump on there, nothing too crazy. And then just the Triton 2 Sand Filter on that. So nothing too crazy at all. We do have the ETS UV system on the teaching pool as well. We actually added that one retroactively last year, and it was one of the best decisions that we've made. I wish they had done that when they originally installed the building. But of course, our smaller pool, because it is swim lessons

and because it is physical therapy patients, it sees probably 400 people a day getting in there. And those are the people that are not showering before they enter the pool. They don't always get out to use the restroom, things like that. So the UV system has made a huge difference with combined chlorine on that teaching pool. Same kind of heater system. It's got a Ray Pack on there as well, but a much smaller boiler than we have on the 350,000 gallon pool. Okay. I think that covers it.

Is there anything else that is worth covering? Yeah, so the CO2 system, which we mentioned before, that is a BEX system as well. And that one is the primary, but we do have an acid backup as well. So if we do run out of CO2, we've got acid, but the CO2, it's really convenient. Actually, we have a company in town that pulls up to the outside of the building. They attach their hose and fill the CO2 without even coming inside. So when you compare that to schlepping a 55 gallon drum of bureatic acid, it's a lot safer to handle, which is great to have.

Okay. Okay. Interesting. Well, so part of why I do this podcast is a lot of this is quite over my head and I do the software side of things and the people listening to this will probably know a lot more about this than I do, but I'm sort of selfishly asking questions that I'm a little bit curious about. How do the chemical feeders work? I know a lot of the residential folks, I don't think they'll have like automatic chemical feeders and they'll be buying those from their distributor and having those in their truck and this

sort of thing. Um, I'm not sure if I'm right here, but I think I might be, could you explain how those work? Yeah. So the pumps that we use the center is the brand, but they're peristaltic pumps and there are a few other brands that make something similar, but the way that they work is there's a little tube, um, a little bit larger than a pen inside of that. And there's a rotating cam and as the cam rotates, it actually pushes on that soft flexible tube. So it's pushing on one side and creating a pressure side and a suction side on the other end. Um, those systems, you'll see them typically in higher pressure applications.

So they can go up to 25 to even a hundred PSI. So in a commercial application like ours, where your chlorine storage or your muriatic acid may be a hundred, 150, 200 feet from the injection, make sure that you get an adequate flow and that's getting injected properly into the system. Okay. Okay. And then so you have background in swimming and now you're director of facilities. When did, when in your career, did you start learning about pool equipment and pool maintenance? Was that, was that during your, um,

work in directing facilities or was it earlier on? That was definitely earlier on in the coaching. Um, anybody that's coached in swimming, especially at a higher level, uh, you know, you've got to get in the pool. You've got to swim. Practice is important. So there were days that we would show up, uh, or we would need to practice and the pool was not technically open. For example, you know, Christmas day, uh, Thanksgiving day, things like that. We still have workouts. Even if the pool people aren't on. Um, so we needed to be able to check our, our pool chemistry and know that the pool was safe before we allow our athletes get in. But for me personally,

there was kind of one day I came in for a morning practice, uh, back in South Florida and we had a pool about five, five and a half feet deep. And we had about six inches of water in the pool. Uh, the pool company that had come overnight had basically drained the pool and forgot to stop draining. They just let it drain overnight. And I came in the next morning and there was not enough water to do that. I'm going to do this one more practice. So that was kind of our moment myself and my boss to say, okay, let's, let's go ahead and get a CPO certification and, uh, maybe take, take the work on ourselves where we're here more, more full-time versus a pool company that's visiting us once a week.

Kind of deal. Okay. And how, um, Much did the CPO certification teach you in terms of being able to operate the pool? How much of like that test-based learning, um, was, uh, pivotal versus like just, just the day-to-day, like you need to learn how to, uh, raise the waterline in the pool and you do that. That's a really good question. I think the CPO course is super beneficial for getting you to open your eyes about code compliance and what things need to be to operate.

Right. And what to do if you can't operate, right? When to shut down your pool, if your pH is at zero or, you know, is it a seven or if it's up at eight or your chlorine is at zero or it's a 10, that pool should not be open. So the CPO certification for me provided great foundational knowledge really for understanding what is a safe pool and what's not. Um, to me growing up, I swam for many, many years and it was like, as long as the temperature was okay and we could see the bottom of the pool, we assumed that the pool was safe and good to swim in. Uh, taking the operator class, the CPO class really taught me otherwise.

There's a lot more to look into, uh, kind of explained. I actually learned swimming in college, we used to get what we call chlorine cough, you know, every time we come back from a summer break or winter break and get chlorine cough. And now I understand from taking CPO that that was the combined chlorines, right? Your chloramines were too high on that indoor facility. And I don't know who the operator was of our college pool, but that was something that should have been addressed at that time. So CPO really does a great job of teaching you, uh, when that pool is safe to use and what to look for with regular operations. But there is still, as you mentioned, a very steep learning curve for,

for understanding, okay, something is out of code. How do I fix it? That's the, that's kind of the next step. But that's where it gets into a little bit on the service technician, um, courses and a little bit of practice as well. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. And I'm curious, what are the, um, what are the nuances? You mentioned that, um, for example, filming underwater, it's useful to have a clean pool. What are some other things you notice as someone who, um, has been such a experienced swimmer? Um, like what, what makes the difference to the pool?

That's one of the big ones, you know, if you're talking about underwater video, the water quality is really important, but for indoor competitive venues, really, the air quality is so, so important for your outdoor pools. Um, those chloramines are going to be taken off the surface of the pool water just by air motion and wind and things like that. For your indoor pools, those chloramines, because they are heavier than the air, they'll sit right on the surface of the water and they cause irritation and the people most likely to experience the, the eye irritation, long irritation are the people that are in the pool.

More, you know, college swimmers, if you're doing a double, you're in the pool for four hours a day, that is a lot of time to be, to be exposed to that environment. So air handling is, is pivotal. Um, I was not here when we actually built this facility, but from what I understand, the owner spent about 20% of the entire cost of building this facility was on the air handling unit. Um, and that's one of the, the number one things that we get from feedback when people walk into our facility is, wow, it doesn't smell like chlorine in here. Uh, and we know that they're, they're referencing chloramines, which causes that the respiratory irritation,

the eye irritation, skin irritation. So we're really happy to hear that. And what is the, um, unit that helps with the air flow and touch? Um, it's also a Ray Pack unit that we have. It's up on our roof and it is about 3000 square feet. So it's a very, very large air handling unit that we have upstairs. Um, and we also have custom built air ducts. So if you've ever looked up at the ceiling of an indoor pool and looked at the size of the ducks, we have 48 inch ducts. So they were custom built to promote air flow through our facility. We do have to get up there periodically and clean, you know,

which is a pain in the butt because how regularly, uh, every couple of years, but because they're custom ducks, there's not a standard size cleaning brush that fits through there. The largest commercial ducks are usually 36 inches. So ours are a little bit bigger and more robust. Um, and also the way that the air is designed. So planning for chloramines and combined chlorines for indoor facilities, a lot of times HVAC will be designed for your, your air intakes and returns, both to be up at the ceiling level. For an indoor pool, we've got our intakes down at the pool level because those chloramines

are heavier than air. So we're pulling air down at the surface level. And then we're returning that fresh air up high. So a little bit different design than a, you know, a factory or other type. We've got an Amazon warehouse right down the street. I can see out the windows, a little different than what they have there. Sure. Sure. That makes sense. what has been, um, the biggest learning curve for you in terms of pool maintenance, you, you started, you started out just realizing you needed to see people who are swimming in the pool.

Um, and now you're a director of facilities. What have been, um, the biggest learning curves for you? Um, there is quite a bit, obviously managing people, uh, is a big part of it. I went from kind of coaching where you have a little bit more of that authority and people do need to listen if they want to get better and perform. Um, when you move on to the management side, it's a little bit different. So working with various teams and understanding the compete, uh, competing needs. Um, and, um, of people in the water, I mean, the biggest one that we hear all the time,

and I'm sure everyone hears this as pool temperature, you know, half the people think that the pool is too hot and half the people think that it's too cold, right? Everybody has kind of that perfect set temperature that they want. And very few people are ever happy. So that was one of the biggest learning curves was knowing, you know, you're never going to make everybody happy with the temperature. I would say my biggest surprise in the industry being on the commercial side is sort of the lack of understanding of when to close a pool down, right? When we talk about, and we see these, these horrible stories of drownings and suction entrapment and things like that, um,

very often it's not out of the blue. It's a series of events that have led to this situation. When you have a, an outbreak of cryptosporidium, it doesn't just come out of nowhere that chlorine has been, or the sanitizer has not been maintained where it needs to be for a significant amount of time. So I've really been surprised, uh, at the number of facilities that are operating outside of codes when they should be closed. So that was a big learning curve for me. And, uh, one of my big things that I talked to the CPO students about is what to do when your boss says you've got to have your pool open,

uh, despite being out of code. I see. I see. That makes sense. Um, so you talk about, uh, like your, your learning code or learning curves and this, this sort of thing. Um, I'm curious, uh, what is that like for the people you hire? Do you hire people who have already learned, um, the CPO skill set and the pool maintenance skill set, or where in their career do you hire them? Oh, that's a great question. Um, so we've kind of transitioned and done a few different avenues,

um, over time. I think the best situation is where you have people coming from different backgrounds. Um, so currently we've got myself and, and our other facility operations manager, but our other two CPOs, one of them actually started as a lifeguard with us, uh, and a swim team kid. And he progressed into maintenance specialist. So we took somebody who basically had a lot of familiarity with this facility. He grew up swimming here from, I think the age of 12, uh, kind of right when we opened. So he knew this facility inside and out and we were able to kind of teach him the stuff to fill in.

Um, and then with our maintenance specialist that we're actually just hiring and he's starting with us tomorrow. Um, we were looking for somebody on the other side that had less pool experience because we know a lot about pools. We were looking for someone more with the HVAC and electrical and plumbing experience, which we're really thrilled to have found somebody. Um, because pools are that complicated, uh, intersection of HVAC, plumbing, electrical, water, right? You've got everything at one time. So that's kind of been our most recent hire. So I think it just depends on our current needs to your

point, right? And getting a diverse team, someone with that electrical knowledge, someone with competitive swimming knowledge, someone with swim lesson knowledge and bringing them all together. It's going to give you the best result. Okay. Um, and then now I'd be curious to hear how you got into, um, teaching CPO courses and CPI courses. Yeah. Um, now I was just looking at getting a little bit more involved. So when I was coaching, um, I was very involved through a USA swimming, US master swimming, Florida, Gold Coast,

which was my LSE back in Florida, uh, and served on a couple of governance committees and, uh, boards and things like that. So I always knew that I'd want to get back into something on the other side and looked at a few different things. I actually applied for a few committees with the PHTA. Uh, my wife teaches life guard instructor. So she's on the red cross side and she really enjoys teaching. So it just kind of seemed like a logical step for us. The other side of it, um, is there really wasn't anyone teaching here in Colorado Springs, right? We've got some classes up in Denver, which is a great Metro area.

Although I try to avoid the downtown city when I can. Um, but on Southern Colorado, Colorado Springs and Pueblo Canyon city down to Trinidad, there's not a whole lot offered down here. Um, so it just seemed like something that, that was really needed. And we kept getting people asking about, hey, can you help me with my pool? Can you help me with my pool? And, uh, we finally decided maybe we can. Okay, cool. Cool. And what is the regularity which in which you teach the classes? Um, I try to teach here in our facility about once per quarter. Um, and what we see largely is a lot of hotels,

um, tons of engineers who kind of, you know, HVAC and plumbing is their jam, but they're like, Hey, well, could you also supervise the pool? So they're learning pools for the first time. And so they have way more electrical knowledge than I do, but they don't know anything about pools. So that's been a lot of, a lot of my experience. We've had a few residential operators take the class with us as well. Um, maybe someone in your audience might be interested, but there aren't a lot of good residential service companies in Colorado Springs, if any. Um, so we've had quite a few people with pools, want to learn about how to do it themselves. And then a couple of times a year,

usually once in the spring and in the fall, they'll actually teach a class out in the mountains out in Glenwood Springs, veil Aspen area. Uh, and they have a whole lot of resort type pools out there. So a lot of spas, hot tubs, um, HOA type facilities like that. Okay. Okay. So roughly there are like people from hotels who are, um, who knows some of the other sort of, um, uh, blue collar skill sets of maintaining HVAC and electrical and this sort of thing. And they're looking to learn CPO.

They're there's maybe some residential cleaners, but not a ton. Um, there's like DIY folks. I mean, it sounds like there are HOA's, um, that you traveled to help teach at some point. Does that roughly cover the, the audience that you teach? Yeah, I think that's, that's most of it. Uh, we will certainly have a commercial operators come and join us from time and time again, but you know, with the certification being good for five years and they're not being a ton of commercial facilities here in town, I don't see those guys quite as often, although we did help a former YMCA here in town was purchased by a church

last year, which is great. And they brought the pool back up to life after it had been closed for like 10, 15 years. Um, so we actually had, I think six or seven of their staff come and take CPO with us, which was great. So now they've got a great team of operators over there and just enhancing the access to water here in the city. Okay, great. And I figure in Colorado that most of the pools are, um, more commercial type pools compared to residential. Am I right in that? We deal with that quite a bit. And then, you know, certainly one of the interesting things about Colorado is our, um,

hot springs. We have a lot of hot springs pools. We've got, uh, I believe the largest hot springs pool in the world here in Glenwood Springs or single pool. Um, so I get to work with a lot of those operators. I think I've done probably 10 or 12 different hot springs here in town where I've gotten to, to speak with their operators and some of the unique challenges that they have, uh, in Colorado pool codes are actually written to cover those sort of things. So, you know, for example, the maximum water temperature of 104 degrees Fahrenheit that we all talk about, um, those hot springs get to go up to 107, 109, 111. There's some, there's some really interesting stuff when it comes to those specialized

facilities. What else comes to mind about being interesting about those hot spring facilities? The way that they sanitize the water or if they sanitize the water, depending on how they're set up. So some of them do recirculate and they do add chemicals and water balance. Uh, then there are other ones that just flow in and out. So that, that, uh, hot springs pool is a smaller pool. One person gets in and they get out and that water just flows out. So it's brand new water for the next day. They're coming through. So, um, some of those don't actually have to use sanitizer at all. Okay. Interesting. Interesting.

Um, is there, um, is there, I'm not sure how much you get to speak to people who service residential pools. Um, or, uh, or you haven't done it yourself. I figure, um, I'm curious though, a lot of the people listening to this podcast, they might be on like a residential route and maybe they've considered bidding to clean commercial pools before. Um, but they just know that it's like a different skillset.

Um, is there anything you could talk about to help them understand what they're getting into in cleaning their first commercial pools? I think really the biggest thing is it's just larger quantities of things. You know, when you'd be talking about a one gallon or five or even a 15 gallon of chlorine, you know, we're talking about 55 gallons. And when it comes to moving a 55 gallon drum of chlorine, that's 500 pounds. So, you know, uh, making sure that we're mechanically sound and how we're moving things and taking care of things. Obviously the adherence to code is just so important. Um,

mixing chlorine and acid is something we never want to do, but it becomes exponentially more dangerous when you have larger and larger quantities on hand. Um, so control access, things like that are really big, but I haven't gone through this myself. I imagine a lot of the difference would actually come down to the contract and the way that things are bid. So a lot of commercial facilities, and that's something we can talk about. A lot of commercial facilities are run by a university or a college or a city, um, or government entity where there'd be a little bit of a different thing. We're actually privately owned. We are one of the largest,

if not the largest in Colorado, we're owned by a single mom, um, which definitely makes things a little bit unique for the way that we're able to do business. We don't have to go request for proposals and bids and things like that. But when you are working with a government entity, especially, um, and you're bidding for that contract, they're going to have to find that minimum of three bids, which in certain markets can be hard to do. Yeah. Speak more to that. Uh, the nuances of bidding. Well, I haven't, uh, I did work for one. I worked for a university back in Florida, Florida, Atlantic University. Um, but with a lot of those types of services,

or even if you're quoting something like, uh, switching out a pump for them, you know, their pump motor fried, you've got to put in a new pump. They have to get, most of the time, they have to get their three bids. And if they can't get three, they can't even move forward with the project, which is crazy. Um, but that is what we've seen time and time again. And oftentimes it delays their projects. They can be much, much longer projects. So whereas a homeowner, um, or a privately owned commercial facility can say, yes, this is approved or no, it's not. Uh, that bid process may go a little bit longer. It may even have to go through city council meetings and

commissioners meetings to get that approved and things like that. So a little bit more of an involved process for sure, but I don't have too much familiarity. I just know a lot of people have complained to me about having to go through that bid process. Um, you know, we're fortunate that a couple of years ago, we did have a motor blow out on us and it was on a Sunday. And by Monday morning, I was on my way to Denver to get the new motor. You know, that's not something that most public facilities are able to do. Okay. And that's because you're owned by a single mom and you guys don't have that similar bidding requirement.

You do things in house compared to say universities or, um, government entities. Yep. And our priority is getting up and running as soon as possible for our athletes. So if it costs an extra 500 out of a thousand dollars, then we're going to do that to get up and running sooner where you know, some of those, those public facilities will take longer and go with the cheaper option. Even if it means a four to six week lead time for parts. Okay. Okay. And are there things you outsource? I know you said you outsourced the janitorial services, but in terms of pool maintenance, um, like are there repairs that you've outsourced before?

Um, very little. But we do work with, uh, CEM out of Denver. They're a fantastic company that we've been working for for years. They supply our pool chemicals, um, and really anything that I need from them, we buy it directly. Uh, over the years I've taken on more of, more of the role myself. For example, they used to come in. If we needed a new probe, uh, they would install it for us. Now they just supply the probe and I get that, that installed directly. Um, but there are a few things that they're still doing for us. For example, our UV filters. Um, if I go and try to do the maintenance myself, it'll avoid our warranties on that.

So we're still using them to come down because they have been factory trained and they're covered by warranty if they screw something up. So some of those specific big equipment, uh, on the pool side, trying to think really just the, the boiler and the UV filter are the only things right now that we're not doing in house. Um, and then we also outsourced our landscaping, but that's not as much on the pool side. Okay. Okay. And CEM, are they like a chemical distributor? Um, they are a, they do distribute chemicals, but they're a commercial aquatics, um, company. So they work directly with commercial companies.

So if you have a pool company in that area and you know, there's something that you're just not able to get done, they've got experts that they can send out to give you more for more support or, um, troubleshooting, but they're not not accessible to residential customers, which is really nice. They understand the needs of, of commercial folks. Okay. Okay. And that's who you get your chemicals from too. Yep. That is where we get them. And are they delivered to you or do you have to pick them up? They deliver. We've had some, some internal discussions about possibly, uh, you know, saving on a delivery fee, going up there, uh, ourselves, but for now they're still delivering to us, which again, that's,

that's a really important thing for us to be able to get, to get our chemicals when we need them, because there are times where we budget and we expect to have a swim meet and we know we're going to have 1200 people here over the weekend, but we go through, you know, a little bit more chlorine than we expected. And you know, having that, that relationship and being able to call them, get them down here, it goes a long way. Like I said, they have a huge supply. So when our motor did blow out, they've got a whole warehouse that has spare motors. So we were able to get one right off of their shelf and get it installed pretty quickly. Okay. Okay. And so there's a classic trope in like full service where a customer

calls and they have a party this weekend and they need someone to clean their pool and get out there. It sounds like maybe in commercial facilities, you have this at a larger scale with a swim meet. Are there any sort of practicalities you need to take into account before a swim meet in terms of pool maintenance? Oh, absolutely. I mean, of course, when you have that volume of people getting into your pool at one time, you're going to need a little bit of extra sanitizer. Growing up in South Florida, I never understood there was one pool we used to race at, you know, once or twice a year.

And I always get an ear infection or get swimmer's ear. And I never understood why. And now, now that I am on the CPO side, I realized that they probably needed to crank that sanitizer a little bit in anticipation of that larger load coming in. When you have your, your automatic feeds for your chlorine and your pH, which is required in Colorado for all of our commercial facilities, there is a little bit of a lag, right? So when you get 200 people jumping in the pool at one time, that sanitizer response will not be immediate. It's going to take some time for your sanitizer to drop and then feed back up.

So going into a big swim meet weekend, getting that level up ahead of time before you have 200 swimmers jump in at one time, will certainly help you prevent those spikes and drops. Okay. Okay. And then anything after a swim meet? Oh, lots of cleaning, of course. And, you know, for us, I'm sure a lot of you guys deal with this just not getting too frustrated with the customers, right? There are going to be, there are going to be things that get broken. We've got 22 showers here at our facility. And after a swim meet, there's always broken shower heads and lots of trash around,

lots of wear and tear that you would see on the facility. For the most part, people are respectful. But when you have that volume coming through, it's a lot of wear and tear. So just a lot of cleanup and maintenance. Of course, if, if you do have a timing system, we have an Omega Swiss timing system. So we've got our pads and we've got our quantum and all of our computers, all that equipment that we need to check ahead of time before the meet and then go back ahead after and make sure that all of our equipment's taken care of. If anything was broken, touch pads, plungers, things like that, and everything is stored and ready to go for the next meet.

The swim meets kind of like your pool parties. They happen just infrequently enough to really throw you off if you don't get ahead of it. I see. I see. Okay. Well, I'd be curious to hear if you have any advice to people who are, or less pool pros, but maybe getting started out in a career directing or managing athletic facilities. Is there anything that you wish you would have told yourself or wish someone would have told you when you're getting started with that

transition from being a swimming coach to a facilities director? I will say, I think my biggest regret was going to grad school. It was kind of a waste of money. There's so much more that you learn from the hands-on experience in this industry. You really have to just spend time around it and get to know the different aspects of it and understand that there is such a huge difference from one type of facility to another. When you're talking about a facility that's just a swim lessons and it's a learn to swim facility, some of those smaller pools,

they're fantastic, but they come with their own unique challenges. Your AFR, your accidental fecal release is probably a constant battle that you would face like that. Our competitive pools, much, much different type of situation. Your competitive pools are generally going to break even or lose money. That's not really what they're designed for. They're designed to help people get better and go on to swim really well. So understanding the different facets of what type of facility you're looking at. Public parks and recreation, totally different.

They're going to always lose money, your public pools. They're going to typically try to recover 30 to 50% of their costs in a good scenario. But for them, it's more important to get people in, keep them happy and have that community amenity. So there are a lot, a lot of differences depending on what type of aquatics facility you're talking about. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. And I'd be curious to hear the information for anyone maybe listening to this who's in Colorado who has their interest piqued by your CPO or CPI offerings.

Who might it be interesting to and how can they get in contact? Yeah, absolutely. So like I said, we do the CPO, which is great for residential pool operators, commercial operators, people that have been maybe doing it under the radar for a while and the health inspector has reminded them that somebody on that facility has to be a CPO for compliance, that kind of thing. And really just anybody wanting to learn more. We've had executives from parks and recreation come through our program, even though they're not directly working with the pool. The pool might be a couple of steps below their position.

So they just want to understand what's happening in aquatics because it is such a complicated industry. It's much different than a stadium or some of those other parks and recs facilities that you might have. So we can find us online. pikespeakathletics.com is the best place to go for a lot of our information. Of course, on our CPO, we also do, as you indicated, the pool inspector class. I've been fortunate enough now to work with about half of the health inspectors here in the state of Colorado. And man, it is so interesting and I appreciate them so much.

I don't think a lot of us realize that in addition to pools, our inspectors often are also inspecting restaurants and tattoos and body art and they have to know so many different things. So I really have come to appreciate our public health officials and our inspectors and the job that they do to keep people safe. Yeah, great. Well, people can find your courses out at your website and thank you so much, Rory, for being a guest today. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure.