Mammoth makeover in the desert

Huge hotel swimming pool re-plastered in just four days

The pool at the elite Royal Mirage Hotel in Dubai was built in 2001 and finished using Cemcrete’s PoolCrete.

During 2003 we were called in to inspect the pool, because the PoolCrete surface was badly discoloured and extremely rough. It was found that a combination of factors had contributed to the deterioration of the surface and the only solution was to re-plaster the entire pool. Flexbond (a latex based liquid admixture) would be added to improve the acid-resistance of the PoolCrete surface.

This does not sound too bad – until one realises that the size of the pool is 2 000m². Because the hotel did not want to inconvenience their guests, the work had to be done in summer (when occupancy is lowest) and work had to be completed in one month.

I advised the contractor on the preparation (chipping, acid-washing and so on) that had to be done and it was agreed that I would be on site to train his staff and supervise the re-plastering.

The time allotted for the completion of plastering was seven days.

The scope of the project was daunting. The temperature was 45°C with an 80% humidity factor. The implications of this were frightening. Not only would the setting time of the plaster be drastically reduced, but working in these temperatures can endanger the lives of the workers. It was decided to work at night (when the temperature was 30°C and humidity only 50%).

This of course brought a whole new list of challenges. The entire pool had to be covered with shade netting to protect the plaster from the sun. Lights had to be brought in and fans had to be run constantly because there was no air circulation inside the pool area. The temperature of the tap water is 40°C so ice had to be used to cool it down before it could be used.

When I arrived the pool had already been drained, a procedure that must have taken at least a week to complete.

After the final preparation work had been done, we had four days to plaster the entire pool . . . this meant we had to complete 500m² at night. Bearing in mind that the average swimming pool is only 70m, it meant that, in theory, we had to plaster the equivalent of seven pools every night.

It was decided to use the expansion joints in the pool as ’dividing lines’ to create smaller sections and thus avoid dry joints. These occur when the edge of plaster is allowed to dry. When the plastering is resumed, a line is created where the dry and wet plaster meet.

We had a team of 12 plasterers and 18 labourers, and every night we used:
250 bags of PoolCrete
350 litres of Flexbond
1 400 litres of ice water

We mixed batches of 50 bags at a time and it took some amazing co-ordination to keep the mixing/plastering chain going. On average, the plastering took five hours per night and the finishing/polishing took four hours. Taking into account the culture and language differences, the fact that the plasterers had never worked with PoolCrete before and the heat, this was nothing short of a miracle.

During the day five people were constantly spraying the finished plaster with water to control the curing. Because of the extreme heat, it was very important to prevent the plaster drying out too quickly.

At the end of the four days we had used 1 000 bags of PoolCrete, 1 400 litres of Flexbond and 5 600 litres of ice water.

The finished pool was stunning, which made it all worthwhile.

It took three days and two nights to fill the pool and we left it in the capable hands of the hotel’s South African maintenance manager.

The whole experience was interesting, frightening, horrible, funny, peculiar and probably life changing – all at once. After doing a job like this, very few things actually seem impossible.

Article sourced from the NSPI website: http://www.nspi.co.za/ with their full knowledge and permission.