With a raft of new legislation in place to help protect the public and ensure all are treated equally, most notable of which is the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), special consideration has to be given to safety in a leisure centre. PEL Services installed a number of key assistance systems in Cotswold Leisure Cirencester including Personal Assistance buttons to allow visitors to call for help, a Pool Alarm system and a PEL Refuge Call System to enable the safe evacuation of those in need of special assistance.
In addition to the extensive fire and security systems, the other major safety system installed by PEL Services was a PA System, used for voice evacuation and security alerts. The key to the sound system in this installation was flexibility, as the system also needs to be used for entertainment purposes and had to be capable of playing different music in different areas, from a variety of sources.
To achieve flexibility and audio quality, PEL installed a sound system based around a Cloud amplifier and audio system controller. Using this system and the clever PEL design, announcements are made from reception to as many areas as selected and music is selectable locally in all areas of the leisure centre, from CD or radio. General music is fed throughout the circulation areas, with other areas sub divided into the pool, sports hall and dance studios. These other areas also have radio mic facilities with the dance studios having the added advantage of specialised Denon CD players with remote control for use by instructors.
The pool area was the biggest challenge due to the atmosphere and the acoustic problems caused by such a large, wet area that is wall-to-wall hard surfaces, bouncing and distorting sound. Toa CS horn speakers were used here to control the dispersion of sound. PEL also understood that the radio mic was likely to have problems in this area for similar reasons and because the person using it will, more than likely, need to walk up and down the length of the pool. A combination of feedback control and graphic equalisers was introduced by PEL which successfully stopped the horrible feedback you would normally encounter in such a case.
The Techno Gym in the leisure centre also benefited from PEL's expertise, with a range of audio visual equipment supplied and installed by the company, interfaced with gym equipment, giving the user a choice of Sky and music channels.
(Lee Baldock)
