Interactive Water Features (IWFs) are real crowd pleasers for area parks and neighborhoods as they offer a great attraction for young kids, and a serene and safe place for parents to hang out and watch their kids have fun.
But no one wants to endanger their kids at the expense of having fun, right? So when a 6-year old boy in Texas died last September from a brain-eating bacteria traced back to a poorly treated IWF, the world took notice. Many years ago CES took multiple steps to assure that would never happen in any Florida IWF that we were involved with and we’ll show you how. But first, let’s back up and define an IWF.
IWFs are defined as zero-depth concrete water playgrounds with brightly colored spraying toys, normally designed to entice kids with unique spraying elements and choreographed spraying sequences. They are springing up everywhere. They’re normally used to spruce up a “dry” neighborhood park (especially around election time), or to give little kids something to do at bigger aquatic facilities. They use underground water storage tanks holding between 2,000-4,000 gallons to store and process spray water, and those are considered to be a likely breeding ground for micro organisms, bacteria, crypto, and more. As such, the DOH has very tight regulations that require you to treat 100% of the spraying (feature) flow rates with Ultraviolet Light (UV), which is properly designed to kill any potential bacteria or pathogens, and to automatically maintain good water chemistry with upsized chemical feeders.
However, IWFs that spray water from 8-5 regardless of if anyone is present waste incredible amounts of energy, cost the operators a ton of money, and often lead to additional equipment maintenance, overheating of water, and other issues.
CES’s GREENPAQC IWF packages resolved that issue with our exclusive control strategy that detects when patrons are ready to use the feature, and instantly ramps up the (24/7) recirculation mode from a STANDBY mode to a SHOW mode including pumps, UV, and even choreography. This provides great enjoyment for the patrons, while cutting the power consumption by many thousands of dollars a year, and keeping the IWF working at peak performance with little supervision.
The system is also the safest in the industry, providing perfect water chemistry and full flow UV, and will alert owners and operators of any condition that might cause a problem, well before it ever can become a problem. The alerts escalate until the condition is resolved.
As summer temperatures continue to climb and kids are enjoying their last few days of freedom before school starts, it’s great to know that both safety and sustainability are #1 in the minds of owners, engineers, and contractors that rely on the CES IWF packages.
Let us know if you need more information on how you can upgrade your IWF to the latest technology… it’s not that complicated, and pays its own way out of savings in labor, chemicals, maintenance, and liability.
