Yorkton water park shuts down on Monday as maintenance work begins

WATCH: Yorkton’s water park will be getting a well deserved break, as it is set to close down for renovations on Monday. Fruzsina de Cloedt has more.

As Yorktonians go on their summer vacations, one of the city’s landmarks is also taking a well-deserved break.

Yorkton’s Access Communications Water Park at the Gallagher Centre closes down for renovations on Monday.

David Balysky, general manager at the Gallagher Centre gave CTV News and Yorkton Mayor Aaron Kienle a tour of the mechanical room on Thursday, a narrow space, which is always locked from the public.

The noise of machines beyond the blue door were inaudible. Behind the door, an unseen part of the public pool opened up. A series of pipes and tubes ran along the ceiling, big barrels were humming and something made a clanking sound.

Balysky pointed out that one of the barrels has such a small opening that only one technician can fit their arm in there to clean it.

“On Monday we’ll begin, draining the pools here, early in the morning,” explained Balysky earlier. “And then we’ll get into the thick of the project.”

They have plenty of work cut out for them. The pool is on a bi-annual maintenance schedule. According to Balysky, they will work on “tile repairs, and just a good deep cleaning of the water park, as well as the changing facilities.”

This year is different, however, as some new tech will be installed.

“The current filtration system was installed, I believe, in 2004, so we’ve gotten just over 20 years of life out of it,” Kienle said. “And we’re now upgrading from what was an ozone filtration system to an ultraviolet - a UV-- filtration system, and hoping to get another 20, 25 years off of that.”

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Hopes are that it will provide a cleaner, safer environment for all users. Yorkton is not the first to adapt this technology.

“Other aquatic centers in the province and in the country are sort of moving away from [the ozone] system just due to the difficulty in sourcing parts and maintaining the system,” Balysky said.

In the mechanical room, Balysky pointed out where the ozone filtration system used to be. Ozone tanks, as well as the associated piping and pumps were removed in May, when preliminary work began.

This big undertaking is not cheap, as Kienle explained.

“The replacement of the ozone to the ultraviolet is just over $1 million, 1.1 million, and then the rest of the renovation that’s happening is bringing it up to about $1.5 million,” he said.

The project was awarded at the March 23 Yorkton Council meeting, with Ful-Flo Industries Ltd. as the contractor.

Due to the maintenance work, East-Central Saskatchewan’s only water park will be closed from July 28 through Oct. 2.

Balysky encourages everyone to visit Yorkton’s Shape Your City website to check what city projects are ongoing and what has been completed.

“That’s the best place to go,” he said. “We try to post weekly updates on there, what’s going on with pictures, so people can kind of see those behind-the-scenes areas that they normally wouldn’t see.”