The Olympic swimming pool in Târgu Mureș built on a lamellar beam structure and insulated with wood fibre panels

Building a swimming pool on a wooden structure and insulating the walls and ceiling with wood fiber panels may seem, to some, like a project that doesn't exist. What water and wood together! And yet this project is in full swing in Târgu Mureș, and the choice of materials is quite appropriate for a swimming complex with an Olympic pool covering an area of 3500 m². Possibility of using glued laminated beams (glulam) is an architect's dream because it allows for structures with large openings, and the Gutex wood fiber panels are natural, environmentally friendly, moisture resistant and provide very good thermal and sound insulation to the enclosure. The project is now in full swing and should be completed by the end of 2020. Being in Târgu Mureș at the end of July, we wanted to see what the construction looks like at this stage. You can see the video at the end of the article.

Swimming complex with Olympic pool

The idea of realizing a complex with an Olympic swimming pool has been around in Târgu Mureș since 2008, but it can be said that the project really got underway in 2016. By 2019 the formalities were completed to allow it to start, and in July 2019 the actual works started in July 2019 on the site of the former 1 Mai swimming pool, demolished in the meantime. The project should have been completed in August 2020, but the pandemic delayed things. By April, the project was 501TPTP3T complete and was due to be completed by the end of October. Local authorities plan to open the complex in early 2021. The complex is built to international standards and will host swimming and polo competitions. It will have two swimming pools: a 25×12.5m warm-up pool with 5 swimming lanes and a second Olympic-sized 50×25m pool with 10 swimming lanes. This complex has the highest height in the country for a project of its kind and will have 800 seats.

Large and strong constructions with glued laminated timber structures

The complex's main structure is made of laminated wooden beams. The load-bearing capacity of beams makes it possible to build buildings with very large spans. They weigh less than steel or reinforced concrete beams and are used all over the world for sports arenas, Olympic pools, greenhouses or special architectural constructions. Another important property is high chemical resistance. The glued laminated timber beams resist the action of acids, oxidation, ammonia or chlorine derivatives (a mandatory property for swimming pools). The structure of the complex consists of 12 pillars. Each pillar supports a beam 1.9 m high, 43 m long and weighing 20 tons. The builder says that interesting about the design is the realization of the buttresses, which are curved. The curvature allows gaining 1.5m of beach area at the pool.

Gutex Thermoroom panels provide thermal and sound insulation

Such a complex, which involves year-round operation, requires very good thermal insulation. The very good insulating qualities and the fact that they are made of a natural, environmentally friendly, biologically safe material led to the choice of insulation Gutex Thermoroom. Gutex Thermoroom is a single-layer, homogeneous-section wood fiber board insulation ideal for interior insulation of exterior walls. Thermoroom panels have good thermal storage capacity and provide excellent insulation against heat in summer and cold in winter, are vapor permeable and have very good rot resistance. Thermoroom panels will be mounted on the inside of exterior walls and on the ceiling. The choice of Thermoroom boards also covered another need - sound insulation. In a space like this, where there is echo and background noise that can be very disturbing to those inside, sound insulation is needed. Thermoroom tiles have a very high noise absorption capacity - between 90 and 110 dB - which makes them very suitable for an Olympic swimming pool. Gutex representative in Romania is Naturalpaint, which at the Gutex workshop organized in Cisnădioara in 2019 presented a conclusive comparative fire resistance test of polystyrene, basalt wool and wood fiber insulation.

Until you can take part in the competitions in the pools of the complex in Târgu Mureș, you can get an idea of the scale of the project by watching the movie below.

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