Ensuring Pool Safety: Beyond Swimming Lessons

Ensuring Pool Safety: Beyond Swimming Lessons - A Deep Dive into Andrea's Monologue on the Talking Pools Podcast

In the latest episode of the Talking Pools Podcast, Andrea delivers a compelling monologue emphasizing the critical importance of water safety. However, her focus extends beyond the typical advice of learning to swim, diving deep into the often-overlooked aspects of pool and pool equipment safety. Here, we unpack Andrea's detailed discussion on the barriers of protection, the Virginia Graham Baker Act, the concept of the 'Sober Swimmer,' and the myriad of other safety devices that can prevent accidents and save lives.

The Four Barriers of Protection

Andrea begins her monologue by outlining the four fundamental barriers of protection every pool owner should implement:

1. Door Alarms: These are essential for any home with direct access to a pool. Door alarms alert homeowners when a door leading to the pool is opened, providing an immediate warning that someone may be entering the pool area unsupervised. Andrea emphasizes the importance of ensuring these alarms are loud enough to be heard throughout the house and are always in working order.
2. Pool Fencing: A sturdy, four-sided fence around the pool acts as a physical barrier, preventing unauthorized access. Andrea highlights that the fence should be at least four feet high, with self-closing and self-latching gates that open outward, away from the pool. This setup makes it more difficult for small children to enter the pool area without supervision.
3. Safety Covers: Pool safety covers are a robust solution to keep the pool inaccessible when not in use. These covers can support the weight of a child or even an adult, preventing accidental drownings. Andrea advises choosing covers that meet the ASTM International standards for safety, ensuring they provide the highest level of protection.
4. Pool Alarms: These devices are designed to alert homeowners when something or someone enters the water unexpectedly. There are various types of pool alarms, including surface wave sensors and sub-surface disturbance sensors. Andrea stresses the importance of regular maintenance and testing of these alarms to ensure they function correctly when needed most.
5. Swimming Lessons: While swimming lessons are crucial, Andrea argues they should be part of a broader safety strategy rather than the sole focus. Teaching children and adults how to swim can significantly reduce the risk of drowning, but it's equally important to combine this knowledge with other safety measures.

The Virginia Graham Baker Act

Andrea dives into the Virginia Graham Baker Act, a pivotal piece of legislation aimed at enhancing pool safety. Named after a young girl who tragically drowned due to a faulty drain cover, this act mandates specific safety standards for pool and spa drains to prevent entrapment.

Andrea explains that the act requires:

• All public pools and spas to have anti-entrapment drain covers.
• Pools with a single main drain must have an additional device or system designed to prevent entrapment, such as a safety vacuum release system (SVRS), suction-limiting vent system, gravity drainage system, or automatic pump shut-off system.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:53

Hello? Hi! Uh this is a little strange for me. I I am sitting in my car. I am by myself. I normally I have people to talk to, but today is just me. And so hopefully everything works out. And I can be seen and I can be heard. No. My name is Andrea Nanini. I am um coming to you live. Well, no, no, I'm not. I'm just coming to you from my car. I was gonna record with some guests today, but we could not coordinate a time. And so I'm just gonna talk to you about a couple of things. Maybe just one thing. I don't know. I guess it depends on how long I keep talking. So I wanted to talk to everybody today about water safety. But more importantly, I think more stress needs to be put on pool safety and pool equipment safety, not just water safety. And when I when okay, so I'll just speak for myself here. When I hear water safety, I think more towards swimming lessons, you know, educating people on swimming, you know, knowing how to swim, you know, knowing how to swim, hold your breath, that things, that kind of thing. This knowing the signs of what to look for, right? When we're when we're telling people that they need to supervise the swimmers, you know, you need to watch people, you need to watch everything and hear the signs to look for because drowning can look like this. And then we go and talk to swimming, knowing how to swim, what drowning looks like, what a swimmer in distress looks like, that kind of thing, which is great, obviously, and I don't mean great as in like that's great. Great, keep doing that. We need that. We need people to learn how to swim. There's lots of opportunities for classes, there's lots of information out there on where to get lessons, on you know what I and what I want to see more of, my goal for talking to you guys today about this, my episode mission, if you will. I I want to see more push towards pool safety, pool equipment safety, respecting the equipment, staying away from the drain, you know, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

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SPEAKER_01 4:09

I I want to see more push towards pool safety, pool equipment safety, respecting the equipment, staying away from the drain cover, you know, that kind of thing. Staying away from drain covers, staying away from any open pipe, staying away from the return, staying away from the suction outlets. Oh my god, I always get that confused. I did so good. I was doing so good for a while, not getting it confused, and then I just got it all confused. So that's what I think. That's that's my point that I'm trying to make today is that I think that we need to stress to people more about stay just stay away from it, stay away from the great, stay away from the dream, just stay away from it. Um, so let's recap, recap real quick, all of the safety products and services that we should all know are out there. If you don't know about a couple of different things that I'm about to list, it's okay. Now you know. Um you can Google all of these things, you can find links, you can find resources to these products, you can always ask, you know, us at the Talking Pools Podcast any questions. Um, okay, so we've got locks, excuse me, locks for the doors and the windows, all right. Lock the door to the pool area, lock all the windows, um, then you've got the alarms, so if you know those get opened, you'll be alerted. Um then you have the pool fence, excuse me, the safety fence, the baby gate, the fence that goes around the pool, which you know they should all have. They're very effective in deterring the children. They can't climb, they can't climb them as long as they're properly installed. They do a really good job. Um, then you've got the pool alarms, which will sound alarm if the they will sound alarm an alarm if the water surface is disturbed. So any type of wave or anything like that, this really loud alarm will go off. Then you've got the safety covers, which I don't mean those, uh the bubble type, you know, the solar covers, I mean the safety covers with the springs and the uh you know the anchors and stuff like that. Um, then we have cameras that can, you know, alert you if someone's in the area that shouldn't be, or if someone goes into the water, which is just one of the layers, it's not you know, I can't imagine that being a fast enough spread, but anyway, one of the layers of safety is the camera. Um, and then you have the fence around the yard, which if you've been paying attention to the Talking Pools podcast, you know that we are fighting against the exemption to that barrier uh code. It's a whole thing. We're not gonna get into that here, but you can go and look that up or go listen to a couple of the episodes that me and Rudy have done about it. Um, and then you have the ladders, the safety ladders for above-ground pools, so the kids theoretically shouldn't be able to climb the ladder. Then you've got these, obviously, we've got swimming lessons. You've got the infant, the infant swimming lessons, lifeguards. You can hire lifeguards for your backyard birthday barbecues, your pool parties, and whatnot. Different uh organizations for drowning prevention and awareness, pool safely, Abby's Hope, Collins Hope. They all have uh Ipsa has one as well. They all have water watcher programs where you assign a person to watch the water, watch all the people in the water. I would go as far as to say, in addition to a water watcher, maybe appoint a sober swimmer. TM TM TM trademark, trademark that, that goes to me. A sober swimmer. This is a person that can still swim, that's not just intently watching the water, but in the water watching people, not drinking. Obviously, they're not going to be on their phone in the pool. That's an important aspect of the water watcher. Um, but I feel like someone in the pool with everybody kind of keeping an eye out on things is also a good idea. Uh, I just came up with that a little while ago. Um, and then of course, adult supervision, which everybody needs that, even adults turning my page. So I want to get into something, you know, that's kind of hard to talk about a little bit, but you know, it's sad. It's one of the things that made me want to discuss this because this is what I've been seeing a lot more of lately is entrapment. So, you know, swimming lessons, obviously, they it's statistically proven that they prevent accidental drownings. But if you're stuck to a drain, swimming lesson isn't really going to do much for you. Um, unless you're able to get away, you know, unstuck. So if somebody sees you struggling and they're able to turn off the pump or whatever, and you're able to get away from it, then a swimming lesson fine. The whole point of what I'm trying to get at is you know, we have five different types of entrapment. We have limb, we have body, we have mechanical, we have hair entrapment, which is the most common type, and then we have an evisceration and disembowelment as a type of entrapment. That's when you get stuck to the drain and stuff is pulled out. I I don't want to get too graphic and gruesome. We all know what that means. So we have all of these safety products and safety protocols. So as pool pros, you know, we have the anti-entrapment um the anti-entrapment products, we have the protocols, we have the VGB Act, right, which covers the drain covers, the flow rate. Um it covers, you know, all of those things on the pool side that is meant to keep the swimmers and the bathers safe. Uh VACLOX, we have, you know, we've done away with dedicated suction lines for the most part. And, you know, I said drain covers already, dual drains, gravity drains. Um, we have emergency shutoff systems. We have all these things in place. But I feel like we need to be reaching these people, you know, maybe during a pool school. Excuse me, maybe during a pool school, maybe when you go to quote their pool for a new service, you notice that their drain cover is, you know, not compliant. Make sure that they get a new one. Don't don't just suggest it to them. Make sure that we're explaining to these people, you know, what can actually happen. And I don't mean scare them. I don't mean, you know, come at them with like all these horrible examples because there are plenty. But I just feel like we need to just start getting them to stay away from the pipes, stay away from the grates, keep your hair up, you know. If you have a daughter or even a son, if you have a child, or if you yourself, if your hair is more than a couple of inches long, that's all it needs. That's all you need to get tangled, is a couple of inches. Because, you know, when we talk to Steve with Aquastar, they do those tests, the hair tests, which I would still love to see all of the information on those. Um, but I don't think you have to have super long hair to get your hair stuck in a drain, in a drain cover. Um, you know, and we need to be more responsible with what we replace, you know, the equipment that we replace with not just commercial pools, but also educating the residential pool owners that go to use these commercial pools. So if we start there in their backyards and educate them on how dangerous the pumps are, how dangerous the suction actually is. Just stay away from everything altogether, you know, and then the drain covers the VACLOCs, the dual drains, then all of those other safety precautions as a backup will not fail. And, you know, we have another layer of defense in anti-drowning because it's not just not knowing how to swim. You have to teach these people to stay away from the stuff so that they do not get stuck. You can still get stuck on a drain in a pool that has um what we have in Florida in our commercial pools, we have gravity drainage pits. And so there's no direct suction from the, you know, to the pump from any of the suction outlets. But gravity, you know, if that tank is empty for whatever reason, you could still have a hard time getting unstuck from a drain that is just a gravity-fed drain. So just teach these people to stay away from anything in the pool. Don't stick your fingers in the pipes, don't break the grates. You know, I understand that's hard to get people to stop doing these things, but like I said, if you educate them on how dangerous it actually is, don't play with the lights, you know. It's it's just another angle of attack, I think, on how we can help the situation more and help save more people, I guess I just I should say. So, yeah, that's all I got for you today. Uh short and sweet. And next week, hopefully, I'll have a couple of people to talk to you about efflorescence and also calcium nodules. Uh, that's another big problem that I see people asking questions about. So, thank you for listening to me kind of ramble on and talk. And it's something that I think I think is important. So, I hope you guys think it's important too, and that we all just kind of start helping each other out with keeping people safer by starting with you know, respect this pool equipment, be aware of the how bad and how dangerous this option actually is. So, also that's it. So, bye. I already said thanks for listening. I just got sidetracked and confused. Anyway, listen to the rest of the talking pools shows and hope everybody has a great day. That's it. Bye.