When the pulse beats at the limit

This is not the first such installation with looping. But it is the first one which is not dangerous for body and life. In the United States a looping water chute had already been inaugurated. But the acceleration in this chute was so high that it was already within the limits for a jet pilot. One can easily picture the serious consequences this had for ordinary users – and so the operation was stopped.

As soon as one enters the thermal spa in Moravske Toplice one is impressed by the look of this novelty. The new water chute rises 20 m high into the sky over the installations below, which are not exactly small either. The top of this structure, which looks like a yellowish worm, intentionally resembles the top of a rocket. When one approaches this yellow slide loop, with some respect of course, one notices many extensions on the outside of the tube which one does not find in traditional water chutes.

TUV inspection technology developed in-house

TUV AUSTRIA was commissioned to inspect this water chute not only because of the contact they have had with the supplier company for many years, but also because they had the necessary measuring equipment available. This specific equipment was developed by TUV AUSTRIA as part of the reworking of the European standard for water chutes and is now proving indispensible for the inspection of such a complex leisure time installation. Everything here works a little bit differently, as we indicated already. Perhaps one can best explain this by means of an imaginary sliding process: To reach the starting position the user first needs to climb from the level of the swimming pool to the 20 m high start tower. After some encouragement from the operator stationed up there one enters the start rocket and positions oneself in the waiting position, standing upright and leaning slightly backwards. Then the countdown starts. If the user does not abort the start, the journey will begin.

A trap door opens all of a sudden and the user drops down nearly in free fall into the loop which has been wetted with water before. There is no way back now. One is pressed against the slide with an acceleration of nearly 3 g (acceleration of gravity), whizzed through the peak of the loop and then washed out into the runout of the slide with a gush of water. It is advisable to wear tight-fitting swimwear since the braking distance from nearly 65 km/h is relatively short. When one has arrived at the bottom one can surely look back on some of the most exciting 8 seconds of one’s life on a slide. If the sliding process would not have functioned as planned, for whatever reasons, there is an emergency exit at the bottom of the loop where a user can be rescued without any danger.

The development of this leisure time installation was extremely demanding. But the inspection too was a technical challenge for the experts of TUV AUSTRIA. They were able to confirm the calculations of the constructors up to 1/10 of a second correctly and could also approve the layout of the safety technology of the water chute. The chute is packed with monitoring devices which meet the highest safety demands of mechanical engineering. At the time when this report was written the “Aqualoop"- that is its brand name - was still being inspected by TUV AUSTRIA. A positive result is expected.

E-Mail: tp@tuv.at