National Aquatic Centre

The National Aquatic Centre is based at AUT Millennium which aims to provide both high performance and community based sports, health and wellbeing. The centre enhances the existing facilities by providing much needed ‘flat’ indoor training/ competition and learn to swim facilities.

FINA specifications for competition swimming pools. The facility contains the main competition/ training pool 50×25 x2.2m deep and learn to swim pool 25x10mx1.0-1.2m sloping floor which allows for both high performance and community use of the facility. The Main pool has a movable bulkhead to allow the pool to be shortened for 25m swimming events and reconfigured for water polo layouts.

The building has been designed to be flexible in that it can be expanded with the removal of the north and east precast concrete cladding panels to allow for over 3000 spectator seats to be accommodated if an international event was held at the facility. This ability to expand on a temporary basis means AUT Millennium is not burdened with a large spectator facility that is not required for the large majority of the life of the facility.

The building has been designed and constructed to provide the best pool environment in an economical manner from both a construction and operating stand point. The pool is constructed with a concrete floor and precast concrete walls which a tiled, main steel structure with Hyspan timber girts and Kingspan insulated cladding & roof panels, double glazed window & door joinery and Feature ETFE western wall. The building has been constructed with high thermal rated claddings, utilising natural light through high level windows and the ETFE west wall, and efficient air and water systems designed to capture and reuse heat energy within the building. Noise attenuation was incorporated throughout the pool hall to reduce noise reverberation which is a common problem where hard surfaces and noisy activities occur. Water clarity was a primary focus of the pool administration and high grade water filtration is incorporated to ensure this water clarity.

The pool water is recycled a through media filter to remove particles down to 1 micron for optimal water clarity, this is further treated with a low dose chlorine treatment system to ensure water is disinfected before returning to the pool. Before the external air is heated it passes through a heat exchanger to capture energy from the expelled pool hall exhaust air.