Lovell Pool closed until May

The seasonal closure of the Lovell Pool started November 14 and will continue through May 2024 due to the pool’s heating issues.
As previously reported on by the Chronicle and discussed by the community, it is hard to determine when the broken air handler will be fixed to permanently solve the pool’s warming issues, largely due to the high cost of the repair.
The component of the air handler that needs to be replaced is quite old and would likely need to be custom made, said Doug Hazen, Superintendent of Big Horn County School District #2.
“When the temperature starts to drop outside, our inside system can’t keep it heated well enough. And so there’s a difference between the air temperature and the water temperature that we have to maintain just for the overall facility well-being,” Hazen said. “And so, as the temperature outside gets colder, what we can keep the internal air at also starts to drop.”
It is par for the course that the pool is closed seasonally until the air gets warm enough that the pool water can be kept at a normal temperature level, he said.
The date for the annual closure of the pool was pushed as late as possible so the community and school could continue to use the pool, until the pool was at a point where maintenance would not maintain the temperature, Hazen said.