NEW TECHNOLOGIES SUPPORTING THE QUALITY OF THERMAL BATH & SPA OFFER

Gurnari G.

Italy

In many aspects of our daily life the technological evolution and the improvement of the technique — thanks to the increase of the knowledge — have allowed us to reach the well-being that we know. On the contrary in the thermalism and in the aquaticity generally techniques and technologies are mostly still those used in a more or less recent past and surely obsolete. This has provoked the inconvenience of progressively neglecting those structures that mostly have not been improved, because of structural, social and economic reasons. Paradoxically the demands of a return to the practices of the traditional medicine with natural means, and the recourse to the preventive therapies — as the constant search of wellness in water — result in strong expansion. Nevertheless the demand is directed to choices of quality, and today the quality inevitably passes through the adoption of three fundamental factors for the development of the compartment:

• The professionalism of the employed personnel;

• The integration of the offer;

• The structural quality of the circle of offer.

This last point substantially depends on the technological contents and on the more advanced technical practice.

Innovative materials for the conveyance of water, new materials for lifting and pushing water pumps, important improvements to the injection of the air, technical advances in heat exchangers, nowadays recent air treatment units and advanced digital control systems allow to have high-reliability technological components. Besides there’s the possibility of reducing the energetic consumptions and the water utilization.

The request of technological systems with higher efficiency — also for medium-high mineral contents waters — has induced the builders to sharpen the technical and scientific research, allowing this way to produce technology suitable for the greatest part of the necessities of a thermal or water circle confined.

The digital control systems allow to record parameters that were little-known up until today: thanks also to these important scientific aim new techniques of water conveyance and treatment have been set, together with new techniques of air treatment for the air-conditioning systems.

The energetic crisis and the necessity of reducing the consumptions of raw materials and natural resources as the water have induced the research to push on toward new operational horizons, with acceleration to the progress that doesn’t have any comparisons even with the recent past time.

The electronics has retired many technologies that had been withstanding for decades and this has allowed starting new cycles of planning and installation.

Now it’s a matter of applying technologies and modern techniques in the thermal structures and however with water (swimming pools, spa, rehabilitation centres, thermal establishments, et).

In the new realizations — where it has been possible to use the recent technologies and the improved techniques both of planning and of installation and management — the results have been surprising. This allows us to claim that in the substitutions, in the extensions, in the retraining also of obsolete or aged structures it is possible to take great advantages of the employment of the new materials and the new techniques of practice.

It’s about not only a desirable, but necessary evolutionary process, essential for the recovery of the sector.

The following two results — among the ones obtainable with the recourse to the most recent productions — are quite remarkable:

- The reduction of the costs;
- The increase of the efficiency also in terms of hygienic prevention.

This last aspect is very important. In fact in a society more and more dynamic and extremely heterogeneous the safeguard of the health becomes a must. About that the consumer or the patients have the perception of pleasant environment not only cleansed, but also sanitized. The result of such perception — also in the collective imagination — is an important aim: the sanitary safety. That is the safeguard of the health inevitably passes through tools of implementation of the hygienic prevention that originate — in the thermal case — from a great attention to stuff often hidden: hydraulic fittings, regulation devices, valves and distribution systems together with treatment systems that make hygienic risk as small as possible in the thermal environments.

Thermal technology is not only a structural fact. It becomes the supporting axle of the quality of the offer because it’s its own duty of protect the quality of the water however distributed. If in the case of some typology of functions this is easily obtainable, in the case — for instance — of the water run into the water of the swimming pools (single or for many users) it becomes more complex in order to preserve the peculiar characteristics of the thermal mean. But modern technology allows obtaining good results in microbiological field without altering the chemical-physical factors typical of a thermal mineral water.

Nevertheless its matter of adopting integrated criterions of intervention: it’s not enough to adopt a device or a material, but its matter of working on the whole cycle of production inside the thermal establishment, also taking care of the aspects less evident apparently. The hydraulic nozzles, the ventilation grilles, the return grilles of the recycling water, the taps or the showers cannot be those normally used, but they must have some characteristics suitable to a special use in a context of sanitary facility.

Only adopting severe criterions of selection both in the materials and in the technique it’s possible to obtain results of reliability even hygienic, that allows to put oneself up with a high-quality level, so that the costs of management and above all the Customers — that will be able to enjoy benefits without hygienic risks for their health — will take advantages inevitably. But it is essential that besides new criterions of planning and realization suitable protocols of maintenance — that must be specialist and periodically checked with rigor — are adopted.

The road of the success in this case passes through good management practices that can never be forgotten, but that must have their base in shared and sustainable rules.