Setting Community Swimming Pool Rules
When summer comes, your community's swimming pool will be a lively center of attention. With pool parties, sunbathing, and people who just want to swim, it’s a great time for everyone. But pools can be as dangerous as they are fun. With the right set of community swimming pool rules, you can make it much less risky while still remaining fun.
Minimize the risk of injury
Getting hurt around a pool is easy. At the least, running and diving should be prohibited; it’s too easy to slip on wet concrete or hit your head on the bottom of the pool. Any sort of rough play, splashing, or other reckless behavior should obviously be against the rules. You don’t want to get sued, but most importantly, you don’t want anyone to get hurt. Setting and enforcing those rules will help to set the standard of behavior high, hopefully keeping people from doing things that are more likely to cause someone to get hurt.
Keep glass and alcohol away
This works on two levels. For one, people who are intoxicated are more likely to do something stupid or dangerous, so alcohol can be dangerous. But alcohol is often in glasses or glass bottles, and those are a huge risk in pools. It’s hard to tell if there’s glass in water, so the chance of getting cut by a stray piece of broken glass is high.
Minimize health risks
One of the biggest problems is that a pool is a big, open body of water. A lot of things can live in water that are dangerous to swimmers. This is why you put chlorine in the pool, but that's not enough. Everyone should be wearing swimsuits and be freshly showered or otherwise clean. Anyone who has an open wound or is sick should stay out, to keep the water from carrying the infection to other people.
Limit number of swimmers/guests
The more people who are there, the more dangerous it can get. To keep the pool from getting overcrowded, you should limit the number of people who can be in the pool at the same time. You’ll also want to limit the number of guests a resident can bring with them. Two or three guests per resident is probably a reasonable number, and the limit of swimmers depends heavily on the size of the pool.
Limit the volume
This is less about safety and more about annoyance. While pool parties are fun, they can be annoying for the residents living immediately around the pool. Limiting the volume of music played can help to keep noise levels from getting out of hand.
Leave nothing behind
There should be trash cans by the pool area. Other than that, the rule should be to leave nothing behind when you go. This saves having to pick up things and figuring out who they belong to, as well as makes it look nicer for everyone.
Make sure to check state/local laws
You have to follow any relevant laws where your community is. Check here for a good rundown of the relevant laws.
A community pool is great for bringing in tenants and making sure they enjoy their time in the community. That benefit doesn’t come cheap, though. While there are a lot of rules and situations to account for, it’s all for safety and to keep a few bad eggs from ruining everyone else’s fun. Set up some good rules and you’ll have a great amenity everyone in the community can enjoy.
