I spent 5 years working on the 68th floor of a 69-floor building. A strong wind made the place sway, especially when the ballast tank system at the top decided it was too far over one way or the other and shifted the whole place a few feet sideways. If you got motion sickness then, more often than not, you had to walk the 20 minutes down the stairs to leave because the elevator cables were banging around too much.
Add a swimming pool, eh? I’ll just set down my lawn chair and crack a cold one and watch the fun from the next building over…
Besides: London!? They get what, about 5 warm days of sunshine a year?
Buildings often have a lot of waste heat to dispose of. I might be able to function as the evaporative cooler for the building air conditioning system.
Now that would be neat. I’m still in awe of an episode of Planet Earth in which David Attenborough burrowed inside a huge termite mound and stood in the heat-exchanging atrium in the centre of the structure. I mean, they’re bugs… “What do you mean “they cut the power”? How could they cut the power, man?! They’re animals!”
Yes. My limited experience in development tells me that no matter how many pages of math your engineers produce, the realities of the situation almost always mean that “state of the art” will be shut down, modified, or replaced within the first five years. I predict that they will end up with a pool that’s a foot shallower than they intended (at least) just to deal with any rocking and splashing, that any residents in the upper-most floors whose windows get splashed will be peeved, and that a building with this much money also has a gym and pool somewhere else that people actually prefer to use.
This pool will solely be used when your nephew visits from out of town and you want to show him something novel. He’ll be in the pool for 5 minutes before he wants to come back in.
I’m also curious if they’re going to test people’s swimming skills before they go up there. If the pool had a shallow area, it would have to be near the centre as it can’t be around the edges which I doubt is part of their plan at all. Anyone who has a medical emergency or any cases of near-drowning are going to be pretty hard to handle when you can’t immediately remove someone from the pool.
Edit: It also occurs to me that to keep it looking fancy, in addition to normal cleaning, someone will need to be cleaning the outside of it on a regular basis. I feel sorry for that worker.
Heating the pool probably won’t be a problem. Big buildings have a LOT of waste heat and this is London where it doesn’t get super cold. The wind up there will be pretty fierce though, probably not the most pleasant place to do laps most days.
How long before some drunk guy climbs over the edge? Because I can totally see someone wanting to climb up on the wall to dive in, but instead plummeting to his death when he doesn’t quite gain his balance.
Thing is, that high up if you have a heart attack you’re dead anyway, because it takes first responders too long to ride up in the elevator. IIRC, survival rates drop sharply above the 20th floor.
They apparently don’t apply in London. There are still lots of apartment buildings clad in that lovely flammable cladding that nobody’s doing anything about.
