Idle ramblings on swimming pools

spantini

spantini

COO of me, inc.
I was a lifeguard the last two years of high school and a year after. All the pools I saw or worked had deep ends with at least one diving board - usually a single ground level board. Couple had high dives with two or three level boards. That was many moons ago.

I've revisited a few of my old pools via Google Maps and they've all been dug up and replaced with shallow swimming pools and no diving boards - with no corresponding deep ends. The new pools no longer have lifeguard chairs either. Now when I look around my area, all I see are shallow (maybe 5-ft) swimming pools with "NO DIVING ALLOWED" and no lifeguards on duty.

I haven't researched the reasons, but my assumption is this transformation has something to do with liability insurance. Though the pools with no lifeguards would seem to present more of a liability with unsupervised children and some adults having some sort of drowning situation with no one to assist. Especially here in Florida, where it seems not a week goes by that a breaking news report isn't aired with a story of some toddler or infant drowning at their home pool.

Do major resorts still have large pools with single or multi-level diving, staffed with lifeguards?
 
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spantini said:
I was a lifeguard the last two years of high school and a year after. All the pools I saw or worked had deep ends with at least one diving board - usually a single ground level board. Couple had high dives with two or three level boards. That was many moons ago.

I've revisited a few of my old pools via Google Maps and they've all been dug up and replaced with shallow swimming pools and no diving boards - with no corresponding deep ends. The new pools no longer have lifeguard chairs either. Now when I look around my area, all I see are shallow (maybe 5-ft) swimming pools with "NO DIVING ALLOWED" and no lifeguards on duty.

I haven't researched the reasons, but my assumption is this transformation has something to do with liability insurance. Though the pools with no lifeguards would seem to present more of a liability with unsupervised children and some adults having some sort of drowning situation with no one to assist. Especially here in Florida, where it seems not a week goes by that a breaking news report isn't aired with a story of some toddler or infant drowning at their home pool.
Click to expand...
I know there was a national news story recently on the life guard staffing shortage across the country. A combination of it being 'less desirable' work, especially for youth used to sitting in front of a TV/computer. On top of that, they said their normal recruiting was through schools and they lacked access to students for a while which threw off their normal recruiting campaigns.

I see the general trend away from lifeguards as a good thing, only because the point of the pool is to cool off and the cost to staff/insure the facility less justifiable. It just needs to be a relatively sanitary puddle of water. People have AC and kids have video games. Times change.

[I have some fond memories of going to the pool as a kid]
 
Why I am not planning a trip to the local pool:
For me, the perfect temperature of the water would be 20 Degrees C. Just cool on the skin, but not really cold.
The local council run pool is kept at 27 Degrees C, which is uncomfortably too warm.
There is a separate parent/kiddies pool beyond the shallow end of the main pool.
However they have cordoned off the shallow end of the main pool, to make a second childrens pool.
Then they split what remained in half lengthways to provide separated lanes.
There is very little left of the main pool.
There is a separate deep diving pool, with a range of diving boards, but the last time I went it was roped off and closed.
I just go to the beach, and swim in the sea now.

P.S. I don't have AC.
 
UK is the same. Our local swimming pool we kids went to in the 70s had it's diving board removed and the 'deep end' made less deep over 40 years ago. The new pool is 2m deep, do diving of any kind allowed - so not even a poolside diving board. Only the olympic sized pools now have real deep ends! we don't have one I'm aware of anywhere near here!
 
I like things a bit warmer in the water when I hit the beach. Somewhere in the 30-C (86-F) range. I can tolerate very cold water but it's not really comfortable. I keep my apartment at 27-C (80-F). I used to jump into ice water pools when I had a yearly gym/spa membership.
 
There's the theory that swimming in ice cold water makes you a bad ass..It makes Wim Hoff one anyway...D man!

 
I have a pretty big pool 35' x 18' and has an 8' deep end with diving board...Yes liability insurance is higher because we have the diving board...some homeowners won't insure with it...

The pool is a love hate thing for me..algae sucks, maintaining sucks but those several days a year the whole family comes and enjoys... priceless...I guess..

I don't use it all that often but just jumped in a couple days ago in the early evening ..it was super nice...the wife had to go and say she always does 20 laps...damn her... so I did 20 and still had a nice time...

No pool guy the wife n I take care of it... Pebble tec is about 15 years old and holding up have several brick coping that I have to replace...the never ending story.... scored a vari speed pool pump and hooked it up a few months ago ..it's suppose to save me some $$ and move more water through the filter daily..we'll see..
 
My first year as a lifeguard, I also had to run the pumps, filters, skim the water and scrub the tiles. Each year, the month before opening, I would skim the algae and debris and drain the pool. Then some company would come in and clean it with acid. I'd rinse it out and refill it, which took a couple of days. I think it was muriatic acid they used, which was not something you placed in the same proximity with chlorine - kind of odd when you think about it.
 
I built a kit pool in my back garden in 2000, 5.5m diameter, and 4'2" deep in the centre.
Had some really enjoyable dips, early morning and also evening.
Testing how long I could extend the swimming season, I went in at 8 Degrees C. One lenth, and back, then
you never saw anyone get out of a pool so quick. The lowest I could bear was 13 Degrees C.
Constant cleaning is required, more cleaning than swimming.
I got rid of the pool 3 years ago, because of all the cleaning.
 
If the pool is going to be used for serious swimming / training, then having a certain, same depth (and 2m is the depth of the local school pool where I swim laps very slowly - open to the public) seems to be the norm. No shallow or deep ends much these days that I've seen lately. Been a long time since I saw one with a diving board - they must exist or diving wouldn't be an Olympic sport, but probably locked away in designated sports training facilities where we normies can have fun on a springboard, more's the pity.
 
I knew (of) a guy a few years older than me in high school. Handsome well fit dude who dated one of the nicest looking girls in school...had a crush on her but didn't have a chance, a few years is in reality significant in high school. Anyway, he dove off a diving board at a pool and suffered a spinal chord injury that left him paralyzed from the neck down. Really sad.

Perhaps avoiding those kinds of tragedies is why most pools did away with diving boards. It's also probably easier to have a blanket no diving policy than no diving except...
 
I live in a residential area of north Texas that has mostly housing developments with HOA's - and most of these have community pools. We're talking dozens and dozens, hundreds. The pools are ALL approx 5 feet deep with no diving boards. I have always assumed this had to do with liability.

On a related note - my wife's folks just moved here from out of state and into a house about 10 houses down from ours - it has a pool. Which is to say... that, in a sense, we have a pool now. Full all-hours access. And, dare I say it, without the maintenance and associated costs. And we've used it - we've been down every weekend for eight straight weeks now. And it has been delightful. Especially given the hellscape oven that we're living in right now.
 
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