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Improvements continue to be made at the Manchester Recreation Center, which closed for its annual maintenance week March 11-15.

Parks and Recreation Director A.J. Fox said a significant amount of work has been done during that time as the summer season approaches.

“Pretty much every inch of this we have touched one way or another and we are not done yet,” Fox said during the March 14 Recreation Commission Board meeting.

This includes shutting down the therapy pool for cleaning, painting the upstairs restroom and family locker room, pressure washing the pool deck and front entrance, painting the pool hallway floor, thoroughly dusting the facility’s main hallway, aerobics room and youth wellness room and stripping and waxing the floors.

During this time group fitness classes were held at the Ada Wright Center.

Fox said ongoing work to the Recreation Center’s basketball gym floor is scheduled to be completed in about three weeks, while the weight room floor should be finished in a matter of days.

Fox also addressed ongoing issues with the facility’s therapy pool heater. While a new heater was installed seven months ago, it has failed and needs replacing.

“We have reinvented the wheel and come up with a whole different system,” he said.

Fox said this time, two electric Raypack tankless hot water heaters will be installed.

The total cost for both the units, electric work and installation is expected to be $24,670.

Board member Leslie Trussler asked if there was any warranty on the heating unit that failed after seven months of use.

Fox said that when he inquired about the warranty, he was told it would not be honored because of the chemical levels in the Recreation Center pool. Something Assistant Parks and Recreation Director Becki Johnson said is not accurate.

“Comfort Group sent out an engineer and they looked at it and they checked our pool chemicals, our temperature, the calcium levels and all that,” she said. “They said everything is balanced and right. They said it is not a water issue.”

Fox said when the therapy pool reopens, it will be with completely new water.

“Part of our shut down, we drained the therapy pool, we got every piece of debris we could out of it, any sand or chips of plaster out and just refilled it,” he said.