Swimming Pools at Student Housing and the Headaches that Ensue - Steve

hosts Steve Sherwood and Pat Rignyan from the California Pool Association take a deep dive into one of the busiest and most overlooked risk seasons in the pool industry: commercial and student housing pools. As pool professionals across the country juggle openings, CPO classes, hotels, HOAs, and large commercial accounts, Steve raises an important question many service companies never stop to ask until it’s too late — how much additional liability comes with servicing high-traffic student housing and HOA pools? 

Pat explains that while most insurance policies don’t specifically exclude commercial pools, student housing environments bring a completely different level of exposure due to heavy bather loads, parties, glass breakage, and general “shenanigans.” The conversation explores the importance of umbrella policies, understanding indemnification clauses in HOA contracts, and why pool pros should carefully review agreements before signing. The guys discuss how some HOA contracts place all responsibility on the service company regardless of fault, and why mutual indemnification language matters more than most pool operators realize. 

Steve also shares real-world frustrations from dealing with hotels and constantly changing management teams, highlighting how turnover, delayed approvals, and lack of communication can create operational nightmares for service companies. The episode ultimately becomes a larger conversation about trusting your gut, setting boundaries with difficult clients, pricing appropriately for high-risk work, and learning when to walk away from accounts that create more headaches than profit. For pool professionals servicing HOAs, hotels, apartment complexes, or student housing, this episode offers valuable insight into protecting both your business and your sanity. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:53

Hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Doot Doot Dude, the insurance interlude with uh your host Steve Sherwood and Pat Rignyan from California Pool Association. So, Pat, um, thank you again for being here as always. Pleasure. Thanks for having me. So, this is the busiest time of the year for basically all of the pool professionals in the USA. Would you agree? Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Yeah. So we got openings, we got uh CPOs, we got everything going on. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:23

And that's why I bring it up because with our CPO class, you know, we have all sorts of different people that come into the class. We have the the guys that want to learn more and they're they're business owners, we have uh, you know, hotels, we have engineers, we have uh homeowners associations. But what I've seen a lot more of lately is people that do student housing. Where like it's an it's an apartment building that's across the street from Florida State or you know, whatever, wherever. And you know, there's normal people that live there, like normal adults that live there, and then there's kids that live there too. So it's not like dorm housing, it's obviously off-campus housing, so you're probably not getting like a bunch of freshmen living there. But still, like, do these pools have any sort of special liability that would be like more so than a regular homeowners association? Because we've talked before about how much the homeowners associations are kind of like uh everyone's different, right? And then, like, the hardest thing with the homeowners association is like the home the homeowners association board president could be a lawyer, could be a doctor, or he could be a guy that like, you know, doesn't know anything about anything. Forget about pools, you know. So I took care of one student housing pool ever here in Los Angeles. And after six months, I was like, guys, I'm like, you're gonna have to pay me a lot more money to stick around for this shit. Cause like I'd come in and there would be like lawn furniture in the pool, glass in the pool all the time. So again, is there anything that these pool professionals that are out here that work near um, you know, university housing that's special?

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SPEAKER_03 6:23

I took care of one student housing pool ever here in Los Angeles. And after six months, I was like, guys, I'm like, you're gonna have to pay me a lot more money to stick around for this shit. Because like I'd come in and there would be like lawn furniture in the pool, glass in the pool all the time. So again, is there anything that these pool professionals that are out here that work near um, you know, university housing that's special?

SPEAKER_02 6:53

Yeah. And so, you know, we've talked about it before. Most policies don't have any sort of exclusions for commercial, or you can only do residential versus commercial. This certainly would fall in the bucket of commercial pool service. Sure. You know, and so yeah, I mean, you're gonna have you've got a lot more risk just based on I don't know, just the amount of people that are gonna use the pool, obviously compared to a single uh single family residence.

SPEAKER_03 7:18

One of the one one of the guys said there was four to five hundred people that came through his pool per day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was just like, come on, pulling my leg here. It was the biggest, it was the biggest pool in their county or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 7:30

Yeah, so so I would I would say that there needs to be an additional level of of care, just outside of like, you know, look, no one wants to use insurance, it's not a good situation, it's at minimum time consuming, even if it gets paid, everything's got a deductible, there's a little bit of money at least coming out of pocket. But um, yeah, I think you know, protecting the business from having to use insurance is is just a good business practice. And so if I'm if if I'm taking on a pool like that, you know, look, I've I'm gonna likely want to carry some sort of umbrella policy, you know, get another million over the top and have a second policy and pay for it. I'm gonna understand, you know, from a business perspective, and you can you'd speak to this better than me, but I it's gonna take frequent visits, it's gonna be high hazard, you know, and so I need to make sure that I charge appropriately, you know, for for this type of work. So just from my my vantage point, and from a vantage point of I'm any business should hope and and put guardrails in place not to use their insurance, you know, that you just make sure you're in a good position and it's worth the risk. But there's a million more hazards, potential pitfalls to to that type of environment than you know, other commercial pools that don't have that level of traffic and and uh you know, likely you know, not having as many parties and and uh people in the pool or dropping glass or the whole ball of wax.

SPEAKER_03 8:49

Right. So, okay, so that brings me, I guess, to you know, another thought of just homeowners associations in general, like is a homeowners association that is part of like a community, you know, like uh on a golf course where like everybody's got their own houses and they just have like a weird hoa, and the hoa tells them to not put like lawn, lawn furniture or whatever, like uh lawn like lawn stuff on their front porch or whatever, you know? No, no glass in the sure stuff like that, but like uh is that gonna be the same as like um an HOA that's like in an apartment building, or is there like any sort, or is every HOA just kind of like a commercial pool? They're all kind of the same, or like uh, because we got all sorts of different types of pools, right? So, like uh at what point do you say, hey, this pool is weird? This pool is different, like uh you're gonna need some sort of different insurance for this or different umbrella, or are you just doing the same thing? Are you just getting like another million dollars of insurance? You getting like the umbrella policy? Because I mean, Pat, you could rack us up for you know, riders all day long if we if we wanted to, right? Like, how far how far do you take this?

SPEAKER_02 10:01

Yeah, no, no, no, I hear you, I hear you. And so, look, I think uh if I'm looking at that, it's like, all right, student housing, like at least my knee jerk without knowing would be that you've got more shenanigans and bullshit happening in that pool than you would in a normal condo association. And right.

SPEAKER_03 10:18

You got kids that could be jumping off the balcony trying to get into the pool and shit like that, where like that's not gonna happen on like a regular Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

So look, I think you know, where I would look to address that, and the reason I I bring up contracts with the HOA, to your point, yes, they're all different. Their requirements, insurance requirements are different, um, very, very frequently. And so I would I'd really look to the contract and like, okay, cool. So, like, what's the indemnification language? Am I on the hook if I'm like at the pool, you know, with any regularity servicing the pool? What does the contract say that I'm responsible for? Ideally, what I advise my clients is you'd like to see that contract cut both ways, where you know, it's a mutual indemnification. If the HOA screwed something up, they didn't have the proper signage or they didn't have the proper, you know, guardrails in place, you know, then I'm off the hook. But if I do something that screws things up, you know, as as the service company, then then that's fine. I'll take responsibility for it. I see a lot of very lopsided language where the HOA has a contract they put in front of you that says you're at fault if doesn't matter what doesn't matter what, like you're at fault and you're taking full responsibility and you hold us harmless and completely indemnify us no matter who's at fault. So maybe you can adjust that language in the contract when you're looking at it. Maybe not. Maybe they stand pretty firm. A lot of times they do give and they put a mutual indemnification in there, but that's really where I would make the determination on what level of insurance to carry. Because you're right. I mean, I've had plenty of clients who are like, I've got an umbrella, I could get a$10 million umbrella, I can get a$20 million umbrella. They're just gonna take the insurance, all the money that insurance is gonna give them, whether it's five, ten, twenty million on an umbrella, they'll just max it out and walk away. So I don't need anything higher. But I think it would determine on, all right, you know, so yes, I would think that there's a higher touch and there's a higher level of hazard to student housing versus a regular condo or HOA. Um, and then what does the contract language look like? And that's where I would kind of partner up with my insurance agent and just say, hey, here's the deal, this is what it is. Have a 10 minute, 15-minute conversation on what the job looks like. If it's, you know, if it's of a concern, and hopefully they've got some some input on the contract language and and kind of what they would recommend, and you can make the right decision for your business from there.

SPEAKER_03 12:38

Right. Yeah, I mean the contract is gonna be your scope of work, right? So for the for the for the duration of that contract, which is usually a year or whatever, I've actually had bigger clients try and get me to sign like a two-year or a three-year with like uh okay, we're gonna put it up two percent or three percent or whatever it is. But you know, the reason why I ask a lot of this stuff is because I've had it happen with uh we have a new client that we took on and pretty decent two hotels that are across the street from each other, based in Santa Monica, pretty nice places, but they've just they've gone through like a general manager. Then I went up and had a meeting like a month ago with like a finance person who like I had to go over everything again with her, and she was just like, Can you just send me an email follow-up with this? And I was basically like, You mean the original email that I just reiterated with you? Like, you want me to just forward this to you, or what? And I didn't say that, but like that's that's really what it was. And then no bullshit, I had to go up there last week and meet with the new general manager. Yeah, and I I kind of sat down with them and I was laughing because I was like, uh, hey, this is like the third meeting that I'm having about the same thing now, you know, where like we haven't even really gotten to the point where we could fix any of this stuff. Or, you know, we told them we need to drain the pool and the spa. And now like the third person is being like, after I've convinced the first person, after I've convinced the second person, now I gotta fucking convince the third person. And I'm just like, am I in Groundhog's Day or what? You know? So like for me, I want to make sure that like when I send out these follow-up emails and you know, maybe like this person didn't see the contract, you know, and that's a weird thing because now maybe you have a contract with someone that uh doesn't work there anymore.

unknown 14:24

Right.

SPEAKER_03 14:24

Yeah, you know, so it just gets into all these weird questions that you can't answer unless unless something happens, right? But obviously that's why you gotta talk to your insurance carrier, you gotta reach out to, you know, whoever does your insurance, you guys do a great job as well. Um, I know that I reach out to you guys at least a couple times a year to kind of find out, like, hey, I'm picking up a new client, you know, do I need to do anything differently? Because not every policy and every client is gonna be this the same amount of risk. So would you say that there's any specific types of HOAs or specific types of clients where just like student housing, it's gonna bring in a um higher amount of risk.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Yeah, I mean, look, I think all of the associations, just by nature of volume, are gonna and not only that, but I my experience, and I'm again I'm not talking talking bad about it, you know, associations, condos or homeowners or anything like that, but like generally speaking, I've been involved in a lot of you know, somewhat contentious disputes with you know HOA and our insured, you know, and and it's yeah, I don't know, it just it just depends. I mean, my biggest thing is like if you're on I I've had this conversation probably a a hundred thousand times over the the decades is you know, trust your gut, you know, like the experience with the association, like for me, if like for for the hotels, like I'm getting close to being like, all right, I'm gonna put a price tag in front of you guys that's that's gonna be astronomical and and that's worth it for me. But you know, I think if you if you're just dealing with really like unreasonable, it sounds like there's some turnover with yours, it could just be timing, whatever. I wouldn't necessarily walk away from that.

SPEAKER_03 16:09

No, I wasn't gonna walk away by any means. I just like it's at the point now where like I'm just kind of getting a bit frustrated because like I want to get some of this work done, and now it's been three months, four months, and now they're like, well, like why does the pool look like hazy like it does? And I'm like, well, the TDS is at like 4,000. Like we just like you have a salt, you have salt in the pool at 2,000 that you don't have a salt chlorine generator. So, like, how how is that possible? You know, like they had a salt cell back in the day and they've never drained the water out. So it's just like, um, you know, we're it feels like we're walking uphill uh backwards both ways, you know what I mean? It's is really what it comes from.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

And just uh keep your guard up in that situation. There's some interactions that are so bad to just get signed up and start work that you know I've heard it's like I you know, run your business how you'd want to, but I would very, very much cross your T's and dot your I's with uh the group of people that you've been dealing with. Again, not your particular situation, but some in the past.

SPEAKER_03 17:07

Of course. And like we we'll we'll say no just as much as we'll say yeah. Um, and we're in a fortunate position where we can, you know, we can do that now, where at the beginning, man, I was fucking taking everybody, right? I was like, oh yeah, I'll do it for X. Like, uh they're like, you sure you won't do it for X? I'm like, I guess I'll do it for that. Like it was just me, you know? So like I'll I'll run around, do 80 pools a week, 90 pools a week. You know, but the wheels start to fall off after that happens, and that's a whole nother episode. But I did actually say I got like a really high-end referral um the other day. And the guy was like, Hey, like she's kind of uh, he said particular. And I was like, Could you expand on that at all? You know, like how, like, tell me more. And he was like, Well, like, we always had to meet her at her house at like 11. And I was like, Oh boy, like, okay, I was like, I'll reach out to her, but I was like, um, I'm really gonna have to talk to her first and kind of figure out, like, hey, if this is, you know, she lived in like a gated community and wherever. But I uh spoke with her and then I got off the phone and I was my gut was just like no. So I just I texted her and I was like, hey, because she was like, Can you meet me tomorrow at blah blah blah? My parents were in town. And I was like, honestly, I was like, my family is super important to me. Like, I I already have plans. I was like, I would never say this, but like uh I can't come tomorrow. And she was like, Well, I'm I'm busy the rest of the week. So then I guess uh and I was like, okay, cool. Like, I guess I'm not gonna be able to make it up. And then I texted her and she was just like, Thanks so much for your uh like you know, your canter. And um, she was like, I'm gonna be honest with you. Like, I do have a pool guy, but I just I'm not I'm not pleased with him. So like I could meet, I could meet you another time if you needed to. Good discovery. And I was just like, okay, this I was like, all right, and I had to go back to the guy and be like, look, man, like I'll take on, you know, anybody that you want. But I was like, I spoke with her and I was like, my guys are never gonna be able to make it at the exact same time. So there, it might not be the same guy all the time. It definitely might not be the same day because we have stuff that you know just moves all the time and commercial comes first, you know. So, all right, Pat, thanks so much for coming on today. I really appreciate the the look on the the student housing. Because, you know, you get these, you might not even know that it's student housing. Like you get this client, and then all of a sudden you show up on day one and you're like, what is going on? Like, is this not South Beach? Like, why are we why does it look like it's South Beach and there's people all over the place in bathing suits, you know? So you just have to be careful with with what you do with all of this stuff. And again, we really just appreciate the insight. And if you guys want more insight about your insurance, give California Pool Association a call. And uh, if you mention the Talking Pools podcast and the insurance interlude, they will give you uh$100 off your general liability annual. I was just gonna say subscription. Would we call it a subscription?

SPEAKER_02 19:52

Right cost hundred bucks back, hundred bucks back, baby.

SPEAKER_03 19:56

Hundred bucks back. All right. Um, thanks so much again for coming, Pat. And guys, thank you so much for listening. We'll be talking at you soon. Have a good one.

SPEAKER_02 20:02

Thanks Steve.