I work for a health club and we keep our lap pool temperature between 78-80 degrees. Recently, my boss requested some sort of article or authoritative piece justifying the temperature. I know I have seen articles in the past on 78-80 degrees being the best temperatures for lap swimming, but it was several years ago.
Does anyone know of an article they have read commenting on this? Any help or direction would be fantastic. Thanks!
Parents
Former Member
Real quick disclaimer - I don't work for the City of Portland, but live in the Portland area, and I manage the aquatics program for a Sports and Fitness Center.
On to Gareth's question - I guess economic feasability is the issue. We have 2 to 3 aquatic exercise classes everyday (except Sunday) and yes our instructors give hard workouts (some are land based instructors who have crossed over to teach aquaX so they know the business of getting a heart rate up). Plus we do swim lessons 4 days out of the week. We are currently looking at doing something similiar to Germany with a slight modification - we are looking at shutting off our heating system at night and then turning the system back on in the morning, so the pool would be coolest in the morning when most of our fitness minded clientel are in and the pool would be warmest in the afternoon/evening when we do lessons and have rec swim. Our problem currently is our pool water heating system needs to be changed out - unfortunately when the pool was built about 3 years ago the specs given on the heating equipment wasn't that great. We are planning on doing this in about 2 months - so I can let you know how feasible and effective this is in a few months. Our current system can swing the pool temp 2 to 3 degrees in about 12 hour time, depending on the weather (another oddity is our Natatorium does not have a true HVAC system so our heating and cooling is actually done through humidity control and pool temp).
Real quick disclaimer - I don't work for the City of Portland, but live in the Portland area, and I manage the aquatics program for a Sports and Fitness Center.
On to Gareth's question - I guess economic feasability is the issue. We have 2 to 3 aquatic exercise classes everyday (except Sunday) and yes our instructors give hard workouts (some are land based instructors who have crossed over to teach aquaX so they know the business of getting a heart rate up). Plus we do swim lessons 4 days out of the week. We are currently looking at doing something similiar to Germany with a slight modification - we are looking at shutting off our heating system at night and then turning the system back on in the morning, so the pool would be coolest in the morning when most of our fitness minded clientel are in and the pool would be warmest in the afternoon/evening when we do lessons and have rec swim. Our problem currently is our pool water heating system needs to be changed out - unfortunately when the pool was built about 3 years ago the specs given on the heating equipment wasn't that great. We are planning on doing this in about 2 months - so I can let you know how feasible and effective this is in a few months. Our current system can swing the pool temp 2 to 3 degrees in about 12 hour time, depending on the weather (another oddity is our Natatorium does not have a true HVAC system so our heating and cooling is actually done through humidity control and pool temp).
