ELKINS — The Randolph County Commission provided an update on the pool/splash pad project and approved the second payment on the project’s construction during its regular meeting at the James F. Cain Courthouse Annex.

Commissioners David Kesling and Cris Siler were present at the meeting, while Commission President Chris See attended the meeting via phone. The commissioners voted unanimously to make the second payment to Danhill Construction in the amount of $158,940.04. The total cost of the project will be $2,163,372.

“We’re meeting the first of each month to go over the progress of the prior month and to receive a payment application for Danhill on the work that has been completed,” Kesling said. “They’ve now got a tremendous amount of work completed at the pool.”

Kesling announced that the new pump house was now up and running at the pool.

“The surge pump is up now and that is something that the old pool did not have,” he said. “In the past if there was an influx of people in the pool, the water would backflow into the pumps. Now it goes into that surge tank to help with the wear and tear on the pumps. It’s really cool to see how that works.”

All of the concrete work around the pool has also been completed.

“All the concrete is leveled off because it’s going to be expanded, because we were able to take some more property behind the old pump house and out further,” Kesling said. “The concession stand is up and all the lines are running over to the splash pad for when they get started on that part of the project, when the pool is done first.”

Kesling said Danhill is getting ready to pour concrete in the deep end of the pool, to bring the backside of the pool up a little where they had to replace two drains that were unusable. He said the next step after pouring the concrete will be to resurface the inside of the pool and install the liner.

“They took out the old gutter system around the pool and they had to resecure that down,” Kesling said. “They got all of that done so they could put the new stainless steel gutters in.”

Siler then said he wanted to clear up a misunderstanding he felt the community has about the walls of the pool.

“One of the misconceptions is that a lot of people thought they (Danhill) were tearing the walls halfway down and they weren’t,” Siler said. “That’s where we saved money on the cost of repairing the pool. The walls were only taken down the top 12 inches or so to remove the old gutter and put the new gutter in.

“A lot of people were thinking that we were tearing half the walls out and then repouring them. That’s not the case and that’s why we weren’t building a bigger pool. It’s because it would have cost a lot more money, and if we would have built a bigger pool we would have had to tear all the walls out to expand and straighten everything up.”

Kesling said the work is still on schedule and that Danhill is wanting to have the project complete either the week before, or the week of the Thanksgiving holiday.

“The only thing that is holding them is an electrical box that Master Service, the electrician on site, is having a hard time getting,” Kesling said. “But they should be able to get it up and running because they want to be able to show us how to winterize it. They are then going to come in the spring and show us how to start it up.”