The leisure pool at Invercargill’s Splash Palace is set to be temporarily closed in March, as its foam tile flooring is replaced.

Invercargill City Council Aquatic Services Manager Stephen Cook said the pool – known to most as the wave pool – would be closed to the public from Monday 3 March. It was scheduled to reopen on Monday 24 March.

“While we know the leisure pool will be missed during its temporary closure, there is just no getting around it. The retiling of the leisure pool is a critical piece of maintenance work, to ensure we can future-proof the facility for our young swimmers and other pool users,” he said.

The timeframe for the work included a week to drain the pool and remove its existing tiles, another week to retile, and a third week to allow this to dry before it was refilled, he said.

The work was largely covered under the warranty for the existing tiles, he said.

Work would only affect the leisure pool, and would be carried out as quickly as possible, so that the disruption to pool users was kept to a minimum. The remainder of the facility would remain open to the public, he said.

“We really appreciate everybody’s patience as we work to bring the leisure pool back to life, and look forward to welcoming swimmers back to enjoy the water and waves at the end of March.”