Tauranga City Aquatics Ltd CEO Tania Delahunty says it will be some days before it is known how long repairs to the Mount Maunganui Hot Pools are going to take.

The pool, which was losing between 40,000-50,000 litres a day, has been drained and a repair plan is being organised.

Mount Maunganui Hot Pools are closed to allow for repair works.

'We won't be excavating until we know what we will be excavating, so it's done in a structured manner,” says Tania.

'We'll know more tomorrow about the time tabling, but excavation is probably not going to start until next week.”

The pool concerned is the active pool; the large one nearest Adams Avenue.

Kevin Akroyd was a people's champion in drawing attention to the inconsistent temperatures of the hot pools.

The issue was first flagged by a regular customer, Kevin Akroyd, who pointed out that the pool temperatures as advertised were incorrect according to readings he took in the pool with his own thermometer.

The issue with Kevin was where the temperature was being taken from, says Tania.

'We've had issues with the pool temperatures for a while now being inconsistent and we struggled to keep them consistent.

'During summer time the weather's warmer; there's a lot less issues with it and what we have also found too is some of the probes sitting in the balance tank and around the pool were proving difficult to calibrate,

'It was just a bit of a debate with Kevin – we don't want to get into that.

'We have rectified it now, but we have never denied the fact that we have had issues with consistent hot water.”

The facility was built in 1989, and there was one meter – and the sea intake.

The hot pools run off sea water that is passed through heat exchangers that heat the water using the original natural hot salt water spring.

TCAL installed meters on the two big pools and that was when they identified that there was a leak, says Tania.

The only major closure the facility's ever had was in 2002-03 when the pools were tiled.

Other than that it only ever closes for four or five days annually, which doesn't allow for a lot of major works, says Tania.

'You don't dig up the concourse every couple of years to look at the pipes.

'When the ground's open and the pipes are exposed, we are going to invite the media down to have a look at what causes this and why we have got a problem and why we proposed the redevelopment,” says Tania.