Sports facilities with their sanitary and shower areas are a place where water hygiene should always be a priority. This is all the more true during the current pandemic, when many people have become more cautious and sensitive to potential risks of infection. In order to be able to give its customers a good feeling of security in this respect at all times, a fitness and health studio at Lake Starnberg near Munich, Germany not only had mobile air sterilisation devices installed for the reopening after the lockdowns, but also the high-performance drinking water filters from Seccua GmbH for treating the tap water in the entire studio.
The Covid-19 pandemic has made consumers even more aware of hygiene and health care. After the past lockdowns, many people are insecure and therefore particularly cautious. In order to be able to offer her customers not only an attractive but also a particularly safe environment for their fitness training, Rosemarie Döllinger, owner of the Tutzing fitness and health club Life Competence, decided to implement a comprehensive hygiene concept that goes far beyond the legal requirements.
Photo: Seccua GmbH
Photo: Seccua GmbH
Started 40 years ago as a small beauty and figure studio, Life Competence has developed into a modern fitness and health club. Directly on the shore of Lake Starnberg near Munich, Life Competence today offers course rooms, high-quality strength training and endurance equipment, an attractive sauna and wellness area as well as showers, changing rooms and sanitary facilities on an area of about 1,000 m2.
Their fitness club was also affected by the Corona lockdown in Germany, and the rooms were closed for months. Accordingly, the plumbing in sanitary rooms/toilets and changing rooms/showers was not in daily use. Despite regular water tapping and flowing through the pipes to reduce the risk of germs in the drinking water pipes and installations, this could not guarantee proper drinking water hygiene after such a long interruption of operations. This concerns above all the occurrence of legionella.
Eliminating the risk of legionella in showers
Although legionella is a natural constituent of drinking water, the bacteria multiply rapidly under the right conditions, such as stagnant water and temperatures above 20 degrees Celsius in the often widely ramified piping system of sports facilities. They enter the human lungs with water droplets or steam, for example when showering, in a steam bath or through humidifiers in air-conditioning systems. This can lead to infection and to Legionnaires‘ disease, a severe form of pneumonia, especially in older and immunocompromised people. But even exhausted persons, such as athletes, can easily become infected.
Photo: Seccua GmbH
According to the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB), the umbrella organisation of German sports, there are about 11,000 sports halls, 18,000 sports fields, 49,000 tennis courts and 38,400 other sports facilities in Germany, most of them with corresponding sanitary facilities and changing rooms/showers, which could also be affected by the problem of poor drinking water hygiene. In April 2020, the DOSB itself pointed out the „Legionella danger in unused sports facilities“.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, there were over 1,000 identified and reported cases of legionellosis in Germany each year (1,443 cases in 2018), according to the Robert Koch Institute, resulting in over 63 deaths (equivalent to 4 %). However, experts from the German Competence Network for Community-Acquired Pneumonias (CAPNETZ) believe that the number of unreported cases is around 15,000 to 30,000 cases of legionellosis per year, which is due to the fact that appropriate diagnostics are too rarely initiated and therefore many lung diseases are not recognised as legionnaires‘ disease.
Photo: Seccua GmbH
Regulations require „measures to restore hygienically safe conditions“
In order to ensure drinking water hygiene at all times, the German Drinking Water Regulation (TrinkWV) stipulates that in the case of interruptions of use in public spaces such as sports facilities of more than four weeks, microbiological examinations and, if necessary, further „measures to restore the hygienically safe condition“ are necessary before the facilities can be put back into operation, in addition to proper flushing. This timeframe had long been exceeded by the seven-month phase of the lockdown in winter 2020/21.
In order to be able to ensure that her customers would not be endangered by inadequate water hygiene and a contamination of the pipes by legionella and bacteria when she reopened, the owner of the fitness studio, Rosemarie Döllinger, sought an up-to-date water test by a testing laboratory. During an internet research, Mrs. Döllinger became aware of the filtration solutions of the Upper Bavarian company Seccua. Seccua GmbH is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the globally active filter specialist MANN+HUMMEL and a global innovation and technology leader for standardised membrane filter systems for the treatment of drinking water. As the operator of a sports studio with constant public traffic, she is responsible - independently of Corona - for water hygiene in her sanitary rooms and showers. A solution that works safely in the long term therefore seemed particularly sustainable to her.
Photo: Seccua GmbH
Conventional methods of disinfection not sufficient
Because once a pipe network is contaminated with legionella and other pathogens, conventional measures such as thermal disinfection (i.e. heating at water temperatures in the system of at least 65°C) or chemical disinfection with chlorine dioxide are hardly sufficient to eliminate them sustainably. The reason: a biofilm on the inner pipe walls of a building‘s pipe network offers pathogens optimal protection. Measures such as flushing with hot water or chlorine are therefore always only effective to a limited extent.
Seccua solutions as a firewall for drinking water hygiene
To avoid all uncertainties regarding bacterial contamination or legionella problems in sports facilities, Seccua recommends the installation of Seccua filters for drinking water treatment at the point of entry, i.e. the point where water enters the building from the public pipe network. This is because Seccua filtration acts like a firewall and keeps legionella and other pathogens out. Membrane filtration with filter pores of only 0.002 micrometres reliably removes all legionella and other pathogens, and does so with very low energy requirements.
A corresponding Seccua filter system would therefore provide a lasting solution to the problem of germs in the pipe network of her fitness club. So Mrs. Döllinger turned to the Seccua team.
Photo: Seccua GmbH
Individual conception of the water filter system
Together, they analysed the exact needs for the size and water consumption of the studio and the individual water situation on site. The task was to master the special challenges with regard to the many consumers (20 showers, foot baths, splash showers), taking into account the high water consumption (about 800 m3 of water in 2019) and an associated pressure loss over three floors. All sanitary facilities and tapping points should be supplied with filtered drinking water in the future. Based on the needs analysis and a site inspection to know the installation situation on site, the Seccua team designed the size and layout of the system.
„From the very beginning, the Seccua team took care of all aspects of planning and implementation, both by telephone and later on site,“ says Mrs. Döllinger, praising the cooperation. „At the same time, I always had the good feeling of a professional and needs-based implementation of the concept for my studio.“
The system installed in the Life Competence fitness and health club consists of three Seccua UrSpring BeWell water filter systems connected in parallel, each with a capacity of 15 litres/minute and a peak output of 42 litres/minute. Seccua water filtration systems are based on completely natural water filtration, i.e. it is a purely mechanical filtration process without any irradiation or the addition of chemicals. Seccua ultrafiltration is based on membrane technology from the medical field of dialysis. It reliably removes legionella and other pathogens as well as turbidity and rust from the drinking water, thus ensuring hygienically perfect water quality. Important minerals such as calcium or magnesium remain in the water after filtration, the water retains its natural balance.
Photo: Seccua GmbH
In the past, Rosemarie Döllinger had already had a softening system installed to protect her taps from calcification. The Seccua filtration was now installed after the softening system, because basically any type of filter or treatment can be a potential source of germs. Of course, this does not apply to ultrafiltration, as its membrane removes 99.99999 % of all bacteria, parasites and up to 99.99 % of all viruses, leaving only hygienically clean water flowing downstream. The cartridge configurations of Seccua filtration are patented in the EU and the USA. As a reliable barrier against bacteria, viruses, parasites and other micro-organisms, ultrafiltration also works more efficiently than chlorine or even UV irradiation systems, which often cannot effectively combat viruses and bacteria when the water is highly turbid.
The installation of Seccua‘s Urspring systems at Life Competence took place within only three days at the house water inlet behind the softening system. The cramped space situation in the basement of the studio required that the three Urspring units were installed in an adjacent side room, from where the treated water then goes back into the distribution system.
The automated self-cleaning of the Urspring BeWell is done by backwashing, usually once a day at a set time. However, the system also detects higher levels of contamination and would automatically backwash if necessary. The water consumption per system and flush is about 10 to 15 litres. The Urspring BeWell is virtually maintenance-free; a filter change about every three years can easily be done by the user.
„The focus of my decision for Seccua was safety for my customers, but of course also for me as the operator,“ Rosemarie Döllinger explains her decision to use the ultrafiltration system from Seccua. „Especially in times like these, my customers do not want to compromise on health protection. I am highly satisfied with the system, which uses no chemicals and works sustainably. I can only advise every operator of public sports facilities or pools to turn to Seccua with their individual requirements in confidence.“
