It's Too Hot on Pool Deck?

One of the regular complaints that I get when I'm on life guard duty is from parents complaining that it is too hot.

But think about the kids. I know that it is uncomfortable but most indoor teaching swimming pool are quite warm on pool deck: about 28 - 30 deg Celsius. This is purely practical.

You need to recognize that water removes heat from our bodies faster than air. So not only are the people in the pool, loosing heat when they are swimming but the moment they leave the water the water still on their body immediately starts to evaporate taking even more heat very rapidly away from their body. Whilst you might be sitting at the side of the pool all hot and bothered the swimmer that has just left the water is freezing.

Now I know you might not care about those who just left the water: but what if that is a person you care about? What if that person is a child, your child? Doesn't that change your perspective? Consider that a heated pool operator has a legal obligation to care for all those that enter their premises. It's called "duty of care".

But you say that duty of care applies to all those who are in the indoor pool. Yes it does but those leaving the water are by definition more at risk than those out of it. Add to this the colder it is out of the pool the harder it is to keep the water warm and this is detrimental to both the cost of running the pool (and consequently how much it cost you to swim) and comfort of the swimmers (and if the swimmers are not comfortable they don't come and that means the owner can't afford to run a pool and you end up without a facility).

I had an argument with another life guard once about the air temperature around the pool deck. His whole argument as the life guard on duty the pool could not operate without him and therefore the ambient temperature should be to his preference. He did not last long at our center.

The fact is the swimmers have to be the first consideration at a pool, bother from a comfort and a health perspective. After all that is what a pool is there for.

So next time you want to complain about how hot you are out of the pool think about why your there. Your there because some one want to swim and particularly if it's for a child who loose heat faster than everybody else, you might want to put up with a little discomfort for a shot time for their sake.