On November 14th, 2024 the Sartell High School pool was drained due to small bits of wrongly cured concrete being pushed into the pool by overhead fans.

High school janitor Russell Tiernan, who has been in charge of the whole project, said, “The pool took about five days to drain and now that the concrete has been fixed, it will take about three days to fill.”

The concrete issue was first brought to attention when Tiernan realized that bits of dust and concrete were being collected in between swimming lanes. He also observed that the higher the lane number, the less concrete there was which was what helped the school staff figure out that the overhead fans above the audience viewing section were blowing the crumbled concrete into the pool.

To fix the problem, the old concrete was blasted with sand that had metal in it.  This sand wore down the crumbling concrete.  Then a hard resin flooring was put in to replace the old flooring. However, this was one of the main reasons the pool was drained because the metal used in the sandblasting would rust the bottom of the pool if there was water in it. This process worked perfectly and the new white and blue resin flooring looks immaculate.

 The 270,000-gallon pool will be refilled starting Monday, November 25th, and should take about a week to be filled, warmed, and chemicals added.

Phy-Ed classes and community education classes should be able to resume their use of the pool soon. Over the course of the school year, almost 50 sections of PE use the pool. Community Ed also makes use of the pool for swimming lessons in the evenings and during the summer.  The Sabre Swim and Dive teams are another heavy user of the pool space in the high school.  

Overall, the process was a huge success and the newly renovated pool decking looks glamorous and will last for many years to come.