After watching my new state of the art fitness center being built for over a year....closest pool otherwise is 50 minutes a way.....big day arrives....14 days pool is open 12 of them I am in it....get there Sat morning....84 degrees!! Said the theraphy pool at 88 is tool warm for water aerobics...but 80 too cold (what the lap pool was...which is still too warm for me) so they compromised with 83 or 84 degrees....I say "some compromise" more like cave in....exact words from pool person..."I swim laps all the time, and 83 feels good to me".......:(
For me I need one or the other: cool deck or cool pool, but not both at the same time. That being said, warm pool for me is like 83degrees...which is what the YMCA I swim at is normally kept at, luckily though they have a very nice ventilation system going for them and it keeps the air very nice and cool, so it's not too bad. My high school pool on the other hand had very hot deck, but cool water (76degrees) so getting in was always hard, but sets were good and you could warm up a bit in between sets.
Water temp is tricky -- trying to please all the people all the time . . . --
I just left a Y that had an aquatic director & assistant director who were both non-swimmers! They can't stand to even get in with the swim lessons -- I reckon that they have too much paper to push - anyway, they couldn't grasp the concept that to have a good aerobic workout, you need to have the water cooler 80 - 82 and certainly not 85!
The facility has a warm water pool kept at 89 and a hot tub - so my point to them was that you don't need all the pools hot all the time. They decided to cater to the fanny dunking crowd and left everyone else behind (3 swim teams, multiple water classes, lap swimmers, etc.). I left them behind and have found a much better facility.
If you get a strong swimming program at your pool with good coaches then you may be able to win the battle over water temperature. I practice alone, but I’m fairly certain the masters coaches at my pool are the driving force behind keeping the water temperature at a reasonable level (especially in summer). Still, the water is kept at 80° year round, even in winter, and it is an outdoor pool!
For me, if the water does not feel rather chilly when I first jump in then it is definitely too warm.
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Keeping an outdoor pool in central TX (or any similar latitude) under 80°F is quite a feat in summer. One of the reasons I joined the facility where I am now is because as far as I know it is the only outdoor pool in Austin that makes any effort to keep the water cool in summer, by using “aerators”, which are basically glorified sprinklers (which run 24-7 all summer). They consist of a plastic fire-hose like nozzle connected to a pump pushing water through about a 2” pipe to make a mist over the pool. Apparently evaporation is what cools the water, so the finer the spray the better. (I’ve heard of pools in S FL that actually run the pool water through a refrigeration device, but I can’t swear its true.)
In the last (outdoor) pool I swam at (for 5 years) that is in a similar latitude to here they installed an aerator system shortly after I joined that was rather clever I thought. It was a 2-3” diameter plastic pipe about 4-5 feet (or more) long with a series of (1/8”?) holes drilled in a line down its length about 2-3” apart. The pipe had caps on the ends and a “T” in the center, which was connected to a port on the pool wall about 18” below the surface (in the center of the deep end). The pump was back in the filtration equipment shed (I don’t know if it was separate from that system or not). The drilled pipe was (eventually) permanently fixed on top of the deck right at the edge of the pool. When on, a nice fan of water arched over the pool (the water shot out of the holes at about a 45° angle). This (again) had to be kept on 24-7 in summer to keep the water at around 80°. And (again) I’m almost positive it was the swim coach who was responsible for getting this device setup.
I find any pool above 80° to be too warm, and I’m a lightweight when it comes to temperature (I like it warm, gimmie summer anytime). My workout intensity is probably most often best described as “moderate”, but I always swim significantly harder when the water is 78° or cooler. I know I swim harder when I visit the spring/well fed pools here, which are typically about 70° year round (and that is a real blessing in summer).
I’ve been swimming outdoors year round for about 7 years now and am totally spoiled. I find indoor facilities to be way too stuffy unless they have a really high ceiling, and even then I’d prefer to be outdoors. 70° air and 78° water seems about ideal to me. But when the air gets to 40° or below I never complain about the 80° water. :”>
The one thing that was nice about the pool I swam at in Qatar was the "chillers" under the pool that help to keep the temp down in summer. Quite a feat considering the temps get to 110-120 during the summer.
