My pool is now under a bubble for the off season. The bubble is held up by a giant fan that blows in hot air.
I assume there must be air leaking out all around since the air is being forced in? ( and the bubble does not change size)
Also how fast would it deflate if the giant fan stops? There are exits but I wonder about how easy it would be to get to one.
Wouldn’t it be easiest to just turn the fan off, and see how quickly it deflates?
I’m not sure about “all around”, but it’s close to impossible that your bubble has zero leaks.
No two bubbles will behave identically, so the only way to know would be via ZenBeam’s suggestion.
That sounds ridiculously expensive. Your electric bill must skyrocket.
Without seeing it (or being told how big it is or even if this is an above or below ground pool), I’m going to put my guess in at it taking about 2-5 minutes to deflate enough to become manageable enough to pull off the pool by hand.
I have delivered to an inflatable warehouse (like this http://www.inflatablebuildingstructures.com/ ).
I asked how long it would stay up if the fans stopped and they reckoned a couple of hours so long as the doors stayed shut.
I think we need to find out from the OP if this is a huge bubble meant so they can continue using the pool in winter or a smaller one meant so that you don’t have to winterize the pool and it’s just designed to keep it from freezing.
Or, just a picture and some details.
Is this pool and its inflation system under your control, or does “my pool” mean “the pool at the fitness center I go to”, or something of the sort?
Do the fans have different settings?
Was there any documentation that came with the fans, saying their power, or their throughput, or their speed?
Do you know the weight of the canopy, and its area?
It’s the YMCA pool so the bubble is big. The air that blows in is heated by natural gas but I assume the fan is electric.
If that’s the case then the bubble is not held up by a fan, at least none of the ones I’ve seen are made that way. I’ve only seen the ones that are held up with massive supports that are inside of the bubble fabric. The pool I swim at losses power every so often and it never falls down. They do sometimes take it down when there is going to be bad wind, but it’s a pretty stable structure.
Pretty sure there are no supports. I have seen bubbles with supports but this one is older and has none.
It’s been around over 10 years. They had to add more exits a while back because the fire codes were updated. The NC fire codes were changed after 25 people died in a fire in a chicken parts factory, mostly due to exit doors being chained shut.
In Google maps, go to YMCA, YMCA Drive, Cary, NC, when you zoom in the bubble appears. (without zoom it shows the pool)
That looks just like the ones that they have around here. There are supports, but more like tent supports, inside of the fabric. The fans are there for heating and cooling and air flow.
I can’t imagine how powerful of a fan one would need to keep such a structure from falling. I’ve been in them when the power goes out and they don’t fall down. When the pool loses power for a few days it’s not taken down. The only time I’ve ever seen one come down is when there’s threat of major weather, like a hurricane.
If the fan were capable of producing about 2# pressure per sq ft and assuming it could maintain that pressure with any leaks figured in, would that not be enough to hold up the structure regardless of how big it was?? Just asking because I don’t really know.
We have another local bubble and it clearly has supports. It’s not a round shape, it’s more of a triangle with a pointed roof.
I’ve seen someone walk in through an open door and there is a big rush of air out when the door is open. I think that shows there is a lot of air pressure inside. Normally we walk in through a revolving door.
A square foot of the material that makes up the roof certainly weighs less than two pounds, so yes, this would suffice. The catch is that whether the fan can supply that depends on how much air it needs to move against that pressure gradient, which in turn depends on how leaky the bubble is, which is difficult to estimate.
I would guess the big rush of air is the pressure difference because of the heat difference from the inside and the outside. I still think the supports are inside of the fabric and then tied to the ground on the outside.
What would happen if there was a power outage and the fans turned off and people opened all the doors, the bubble would collapse pretty quickly I would think.
The fans you hear are most likely the heaters, there are a couple in my bubble too. No one wants to be cold getting out of the pool so they probably keep it pretty warm.
I still think that the bubble has poles like a tent and you just can’t see them. They wouldn’t need a support in the middle, or anywhere else.