LIGHTEN UP THE POOLS UNDERWATER POOL AND SPA LIGHTING IN AQUATIC CENTRES Dr Walter Wendel*
Let’s face it: without lighting, even the most beautiful pool would not stand out at night. But even during the day, pools and spas in aquatic centres and water parks can look quite dull without good decorative and functional lighting.
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o, what is the purpose of the lighting? Basically, we can break it down into three categories: • Functional lighting: illuminating the pool surrounds and other areas of the aquatic centre or water park. • B eautification of the pool, spa and surrounding landscape. • Safety for swimmers. The most neglected lighting for public indoor and outdoor pools and spas is the underwater lighting, which is the primary focus of this article.
Case study: Carpesol Aquatic Centre Let’s use, as an example, the Carpesol Aquatic and Recreational Centre in Germany. The €19 million (AU$27 million) project was opened to the public in mid-2013 after a 21-month construction period. It combines training pools with leisure pools and saunas, creating a space where swimmers can be active or just relax. With 10 different pools and spas, four saunas and one steam bath, the centre has something to offer everyone.
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In order to create the right atmosphere, coloured RGB lighting was used extensively within the pool, as well as throughout the surrounding areas. With the availability of LED light sources, coloured light and light changes are easily managed. With DMX controlled lighting, it is easy to achieve the desired results as the controllers can be programmed to set and recall static and dynamic scenes. The image on the front cover shows the powerful 85 W RGB underwater LED lights in the pool, smaller 28 W ones in the fountain and surface-mounted spotlights in the upper half of the dome. For the fountain and dome illumination, different colours are used in comparison to the pool and the surroundings to achieve a colour contrast. With the help of the DMX controllers, it is easy for the operator to adjust this. For the large outdoor pool, powerful 115 W RGB LED fittings were used to illuminate the pool, with the side effect that the stray light from the pool illuminates the adjacent building. (Image above.) The lighting designer chose a wide light beam distribution and as a result a homogenous illumination was
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