Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa August 2016 | Page 51

visitors from across the world. At eight hectares, this
Lagoon obtained the company’s first world record in
2007 for the world’s largest manmade lagoon.
The idea of outfitting developments with such
large water features such as lakes and beachfronts has
been unthinkable, as there are so many challenges,
including maintenance. Crystal Lagoons technology,
however, has changed this by managing water and
energy more efficiently.
Conventional swimming pool technology requires
maintaining high and permanent levels of residual
chlorine or other disinfectants in the water to
provide permanent disinfection to the pool and
avoid contamination of the water brought by external
agents such as bathers. Crystal Lagoons’ solution
is to apply disinfection pulses within the lagoon,
using controlled pulses of very small quantities of
oxidants/micro-biocides applied according to specific
algorithms on very specific patterns. The results of
this efficient pulse-based disinfection system are that
the overall amounts of additives consumed using
Crystal Lagoons’ technology are up to 100 times less
than the amount used for swimming pools.
The company’s lagoon in Egypt’s Citystars Sharm
El Sheikh development is a massive 12.5 hectares,
yet uses only two percent of the energy required by
conventional swimming pool centralized filtration
www.reimag.co.za

systems. Instead of filtration of its entire volume of
water from 1 to 6 times per day, Crystal Lagoons’
solution is to apply a combination of different
ultrasonic waves to the water in the lagoon, which
allows agglomerating the contaminant particles
into larger particles that are easily removed from
the system. In 2015, this lagoon surpassed the San
Alfonso del Mar lagoon in Chile as the world’s largest.
According to Sinclair, a lagoon can also be
incorporated into the heating, ventilation and airconditioning systems of commercial or multifamily
residential buildings to provide high energy savings
compared with conventional technologies.
“This lowers considerably the energy required for
cooling, thus lowering the total carbon footprint
whilst contributing further to sustainability”, Sinclair
adds.
“Africa has the world’s highest rate of urbanisation,
and the growing demand on existing infrastructure
means that new development opportunities need to
be identified away from the continent’s congested
cities. A Crystal Lagoon is a superb opportunity for
development of inland locations, whilst contributing
positively to local economies” Sinclair concludes.

RESOURCES
Irvine Bartlett
AUGUST 2016 SA Real Estate Investor

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