Pee and chlorine

[ailbhe]

We went to Coral Reef leisure pool today, to give Linnea a treat (memo to self: nothing involving 20-30 minutes each way by car is a treat for a child prone to carsickness, really). We did have a fabulous time; the little outdoor section was open, and it's much quieter out there without the echoes and the music.

However, a child-focussed pool like that has about six times as much pee in it as other pools, and therefore about seventeen times as much chlorine (numbers pulled from a cloud, not actual statistics). So my vaginal vestibulitis is not a happy inflammation right now. Burn, baby, burn, as the cool kids say.

The changing rooms were cleaner than the other theme pool we go to, the local one, Rivermead. But that has the filthiest changing facilities I've ever seen; it seems to be populated mainly by people who have just come off a muddy football pitch and then had a pee, judging by the state of the floors after about noon on a weekend. It's really very unpleasant; I wish they'd enforce a No Outdoor Shoes In The Changing Rooms rule or something.

The pool in Hemse, Gotland, on the other hand, has always had pristine changing rooms when we went, often with completely dry floors. Very pleasant. I heard on BBC Radio 4 recently an item about chlorine in public pools - apparently British pools need more chlorine than continental ones because it's not usual to shower and use the toilet before entering the pool. I know that most people using the pools I've used in England and, for that matter, in Ireland, do not shower before entering, so it seems quite plausible to me.

Once a year, whether we need to or not, we western Europeans. Heh.

Comments

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

while i mostly dislike showers, i used to always shower (and pee) before using a public swimming pool. it only makes sense that when i share a closed system with lots of other people, that i limit the amount of crud i add to it. also, high chlorine content sucks, which is even more of an incentive to keep it clean. i think it usually takes some management initiative to impress on people to keep things clean -- sounds like the one pool you use has managed to do that -- maybe a letter to rivermead pointing them at hemse for inspiration would do some good?

i am glad i have ocean and river here, because i've become over the years too sensitive to chlorine, and can no longer abide the amount present in public pools.

[ailbhe]

I suspect Hemse simhall is representative of a general Swedish trend. It's noticable in public toilet facilities, too. Toilets in expensive British department stores, or otherwise nice restaurants, can be really cruddy, whereas even hole-in-the-ground ones near the lake the day of the island festival were clean and not soggy on Gotland.

But it's almost certainly worth writing to Rivermead and suggesting that, yes. I probably should.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

I think part of the problem is that in most British pools, the showers and the changing rooms share a single exit to the main pool. The German pools I grew up around were all laid out in such a way that you had to go into the main pool area and then into a separate room to shower. This meant that the lifeguards could see whether you were using the shower or not, and if that wasn't enough to embarrass you into doing so, they would simply refuse to allow you into the pool until you did (judged by whether or not your hair was wet when you emerged from the shower room). Alternatively, some pools had overhead showers in the passageway from the changing rooms to the pool, so you couldn't escape without a shower whether you wanted to or not. I didn't like those because the water was usually too cold, though. The lifeguards also enforced the use of special sprays against athlete's foot which were provided by the pool and had to be used before and after swimming.

[ailbhe]

Nope, the Hemse pool has showers in the changing area, between the getting-dressed bit and the exit-to-pool bit, positioned such that you won't get splashed walking past them. And no enforcers. Just like the British pools we use, in fact.

[geekling.livejournal.com]

I can't help but wonder if it's partly due to the 'no shoes indoors' prevalent in .se culture.

In a very general sense: Dirty floors just seems more upsetting to the Swedish pshyke than it does here in .uk, no one really seems to care, since they're wearing shoes anyhow.

Even if you are allowed to wears shoes in the changing rooms, and getting there, you know it's slightly wrong (because it is indoors) so more care is taken to not leave telltale tracks - sort of thing.

And of course the good old Lutheran rules abiding thing.

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

ISTR when I were a lad that pools typically had a bit you had to walk through to get to the main pool that had higher than normal chlorine, to try to stop the spread of varuccas. But showering wasn't common - hell, showering at all for any reason wasn't common in the UK back in the 60s. Weekly bath! (as Ailbhe says: whether you needed it or not)

[khrister.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, almost everyone here (in Sweden) showers before getting into the pool. It's been that way as far back as I can remember going to them (early eighties), too.

When it comes to toilets though, it depends on the establishment. The drunker the clientele, the dirtier it gets, in general.

[barakta]

My grandmother used to be a member of a private swimming club in Glasgow (when she could afford it, before she retired) which had very strict showering before you swam rules. Anyone with hair longer than a few inches had to wear a swimcap and it was generally expected that people would wear one anyway.

The building was large and Victorian, and obviously being members only it was clean and decent. The water was not very chlorinated because 1) people had to shower beforehand, and 2) I think they used more expensive UV filtering systems. Members were permitted to take up to three visitors no more than once a month (that's one instance of visitors) which is how I ever got to go there.

I'd never come across the concept of showering before using pools, although I saw the benefits of it.