Council approves bid for Sportsplex pool repair
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Brandon City Council has awarded another contract for repairs to the North Hill Sportsplex.
At its regular meeting on Tuesday, council approved a $96,110.48 contract to Brandon Heating and Plumbing to install a hydronic pre-heating coil for the Sportsplex pool, which will heat up air protecting a separate unit prone to freezing.
Perry Roque, the city’s director of parks and recreation services, said a Dectron unit — which acts as the heater and dehumidifier for the pool area — is prone to freezing in the winter and was sometimes causing problems.
City of Brandon director of parks and recreation services Perry Roque talks at a city council meeting on Tuesday. (Alex Lambert/The Brandon Sun)
“The Dectron unit doesn’t have the pre-heating coil in the system to pre-heat the cold air that’s coming into the building,” Roque said. “That cold air was coming in and it was freezing our systems, so that was creating problems for us.
“We’ve had it go down a couple times where it froze up and damaged it, and we’ve had to do repairs,” he said. “The pre-heat coil will pre-heat cold air coming into the area so we prevent further damage on that piece of equipment.”
A council report says “multiple compressor failures have occurred due to system overload” over the past 10 years.
Council budgeted $65,000 for the project early this year, leaving a shortfall of $31,110.48.
The rest of the money is being taken from the Sportsplex reserve, leaving the fund with a projected $341,000 at the end of the year, city spokesperson Merrilea Metcalf said.
Roque said the cold air was causing cracks in the Dectron unit.
“When it freezes, whenever anything freezes, it cracks, then it doesn’t work properly,” he said. “So part of it might not be functioning at 100 per cent, so we need to make sure that it functions the way it’s designed to function. And having this pre-heated cold air will help us keep it operating properly.”
After the meeting, Roque told the Sun that the project coming in over budget has become a common occurrence recently.
“We’re seeing that consistently in a lot of our tenders — they’re coming in higher than what our budgeted pricing was at,” he said. “I often say we’re still seeing the effects of COVID and businesses recovering after COVID … and sometimes there’s tariffs that are being put on and having our costs go up, and there’s uncertainty in the market for business people.”
Roque confirmed to council that the pool will remain operational while work happens.
He wasn’t able to give a timeline on when the project might get started or be completed. There will be a meeting shortly, he said, but the contractor might need to order special parts to complete the work.
Brandon Heating and Plumbing beat out two other bids on Monday. Neepawa Plumbing and Heating submitted a bid of $107,320.87 and MNK Mechanical Services Ltd. had a bid of $202,635.53.
» alambert@brandonsun.com