Best temp for water?

Not sure why there's such resistance to the idea of maintaining two pools... one - kept cold - for those who use a pool as an excercise machine, or for competition, and another - kept warm - for the majority of people who'd like to come swimming, but are put off by ice water. How many facilities have the luxury of 2 pools, side by side where you could do this ? I have not come across any yet, I am only 40 tho ! Or are you expecting seperate leisure centres in an area to co-ordinate where one pool is kept warm and another is cooler? This would be very unlikely to work in practice for all kinds of reasons. Oh and thanks for calling me a "knucklehead", much appreciated !! Only 8 posts and the use of personal insults already !!!

Any aquatics director who allows his/her pool to operate above 83 degrees F (except at therapy facilities) should be shot. And those who consistently keep the pool 76-80 should get a big wet kiss. All you aerobics folks who think the water should be warmer aren't working hard enough. That is why you still gain weight and eat too much after your 1/2 hour of splashing and burning off 8 huge calories (while you talk about where to go to get cinnamon buns after class). Do all the real swimmers a favor and have virtual classes at Starbucks. We could use water for actual exercise. And you floaters.... go home and sit in the tub if you need warm water. Pools are ACTIVITY centers, not teapots where lethargic sluggards come to steep. End of current rant. Wiping foam from mouth.

Gareth, Did you get that "over-heated" water problem sorted out at your pool recently??Did they actuallly concede that you really did know more about what you were talking about than they did?? :D Mark

Mark, I got somewhere with the pool management. The temp was at 30 ' C (86 ' F) for a few months in the summer. The temp now is now around 28.5' C (83' F). Somedays it gets much warmer around 29'C (84'F). We are never down to 27'C (81'F) though. The pool IS too warm to do a big workout though, so I am making the best of it for now. Are you going to be at Sheffield for the Masters Nationals ?

Everyone has their opinion, unfortunately as being from the management side of things - numbers and dollars are the the issues I have to look at. Sure I'll admit I would rather swim in a pool closer to 80 degrees (as most, but not all competitive swimmers would). If the only people using my facility were of the same mindset, then there wouldn't be an issue -unfortunately I don't have that luxury in two ways. First off the competitive/lap swimmers can't even agree on a good water temp - we keep ours right about 83 degrees (plus/minus a degree depending on weather, pool maintenance and where in the pool you take the temp). About 1/3 of the lap swimmers think its too warm, about 1/3 think its just right and 1/3 think its too cold. The other issue is the lap swimmers only make up about 1/3 my facility users (depending on the day 1/2 to 1/3) so the other portion of my daily patrons (aqua exercise, swim lessons, rec swim, aqua joggers, sports rehab, scuba, etc.) tend to think the pool is either just right or too cold (a few think its too warm - a very very very minute percentage). We could drop the pool temp to 81 and about 1/6 of our patrons would be happy (the other 5/6 would think it too cold) or I could raise it to 85/86 and have about close to 1/2 happy and the other 1/2 too hot (of course that would drive up my heating bill). So we strive for a comfortable medium, which allows everyone to use the pool with it being not to unbearable.

This time I think Jeff is right. He should know about this since he is a recreational director of the city of Portland where he is in charge of several pools, he can correct me on this. I think in my city it depends upon different areas. The eastside of town has more adult lap swimmers and some aerobic water people at the rec pool where I do my workouts at. Swimmers range from many that are slower than me with a few that can clubber me in freestyle. There are a few older seniors that use a certain lane and swim a few laps and socialized. so, these peopl like Jeff states like different tempertures. Another pool in my area that I swam at once was cold because there is a slide and the day I went there they combine lap with rec. In other parts of the city particularly in the poorer sections there is a lot more kids. When these kids take swim lessions they probably like the water warm but during rec swimming they like it cold for the slide.

Originally posted by MrEarl On a visit to Germany, I noticed that many facilities (with a single pool) had figured out how to please almost everybody. On five days, they maintained the water temperature at about 80°, but twice a week they had warm days, on which they raised the water temperature to about 85° and raised their admission fee slightly to offset the extra cost of heating. Problem solved, with a minimum of acrimony. They must have different pools in Germany than they do here. My pool takes several DAYS for the water temperature to change! When they first fill it after it's been drained for maintenance in August, it is frigid. It takes about a week before you don't gasp when you first hit the water.

On a visit to Germany, I noticed that many facilities (with a single pool) had figured out how to please almost everybody. On five days, they maintained the water temperature at about 80°, but twice a week they had warm days, on which they raised the water temperature to about 85° and raised their admission fee slightly to offset the extra cost of heating. Problem solved, with a minimum of acrimony.

I am glad that they found this solution. However many pools have daily classes in Water Aerobics, or learn to swim and other activities whose participants want hot water to bathe in. If a pool operator could schedule these activities on specific days and have cooler water for real swimmers on other days then it could work. Perhaps " Kaelonji " could tell us how feasible this is. Oh and BTW " the flippers do not fit "! I have not insulted you, why are you insulting me? A reasonable person would have said sorry for the "knucklehead" remark !!!

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).