Craigie Leisure Centre Geothermal Heating Enhancement

“Oceanis’ exceptional engineering for remediating the under-performing geothermal system has resulted in Craigie Leisure Centre now heating its pools over the cold winter months with close to zero use of the backup electric heating.”

Geothermal heating systems provide excellent environmentally sustainable solutions ideal for heating large aquatic centres.  However, as they age or stop performing at their intended design capability, they become inefficient and expensive to maintain.

This was the case for Craigie Leisure Centre (CLC), which had become increasingly reliant on electric backup heating and was facing significantly higher operational costs.

An investigation conducted by Oceanis in 2021 identified that the geothermal bore suffered from low temperature geothermal water and frequent clogging. Refurbishing a low temperature geothermal bore presents significant challenges and would require a new technically challenging energy efficient design to allow CLC to generate more heat and maximise the thermal energy extracted from the existing system.

Oceanis responded with a comprehensive redesign of the geothermal infrastructure — designing new heat exchange systems to maximise heat extraction and re-designed all hydraulics to maximise extraction rates of the existing well and minimise system pressure drop.

Oceanis also introduced optimised thermal storage/surcharge control system strategies. Most importantly Oceanis developed cascading geothermal water use which extracted the maximum available thermal energy out of the pumped water. A new optimally sized geothermal pump has also been selected, and new geothermal fluid filters have been installed to minimise clogging of the injection bore.

The result is that Craigie Leisure Centre has been able to turn off its supplementary heat pumps which had been required to operate for the last 18 years, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for the local council.

The improved geothermal performance now reliably supports year-round heating across all aquatic areas, including the Centre’s indoor spa pools, strengthening both energy efficiency outcomes and guest wellness experiences.