How deep should my pool be? This is one of my perennial favorite topics!
As noted in my earlier article about pool size, people tend to have emotional ideas about swimming pools and that includes pool depth. Many people believe that they spent their childhood hours by the pool diving into the deep end – the deeper the better! They can’t imagine installing a pool that doesn’t have a deep end and a diving board. Please take a few minutes to consider some of the following information about pool depth and how people truly use their pools.
According to a study I read years ago (that I have not been able to locate again) people spend up to 85% of their time in a swimming pool in water less than 4 deep. I found that hard to believe, so I started to take a mental inventory of my many years in and around water.
First I will reminisce about the many summers I spent at my parent’s cottage. Interestingly enough, my father, who had been a waterfront director at a summer camp, and my mother, who couldn’t swim, picked our lakefront cottage on the basis of water depth. The water very gradually got deeper for about 200 feet and then there was a steep drop off. I lived in the lake. We had wooden rafts that were floated on barrels. The anchor ropes were long enough to go to the deep water, but most of the time the rafts were anchored where the water was about chest deep, where you could play water polo or volleyball. The clams were also abundant at that depth and we collected them by the thousands! We played Frisbee and football where it was even shallower.
Later, as a lifeguard at the city pool, I watched people use the swimming pool a little differently. During a public swim, there were always a few people that would use the diving board regularly, but they were the minority. The families played in the shallow end for the most part and sometimes moved progressively deeper where a Dad could stand in chest deep water and catch the kids jumping from the side. Older kids would collect hockey pucks off the bottom from anywhere in the pool, but the deepest water was not popular for that game. For the people who swam lengths, the depth of the water didn’t matter.
I took my first trip to Acapulco with my buddies when I was 19. We stayed at a classic Hilton hotel on the bay where we spent most of the time at the pool, not on the beach. The pool was a big “L” shaped thing that was shallow on the long part and deep in the “toe” of the pool. The deep area had a 3m diving board and I would have thought that everyone would be lined up to use it. Amazingly, we saw only one drunken fool climb the ladder of that diving board the whole week we were there. He made a big belly flop, everyone cheered and that was the end of seeing anyone in the deep end of the pool!
Now, a few decades later, I’ve been to a lot of pools and resorts. Today most resort pools don’t even have a deep end. The busiest areas are the steps, benches, swim-outs and beach entry areas. Those are followed in popularity by the swim up bar and volleyball areas. I have yet to hear a person complain that there was no diving board or deep end.
I’ll give you one last consideration related to having a diving board. According to the NSPI/ANSI standard that the diving board manufacturers use to specify the size of a pool required for a diving board, you would generally end up with at least a 32 foot long pool. That pool would have 8’ of flat shallow area leading to a slippery slope down to an 8’ deep end. The flat area is usually only three feet deep and too shallow for most people, and the sloped area is too steep to stand on. In any event, you have paid good money to use 75% of your pool less than 15% of the time and 85% of the time you are in an area that is too shallow and too small! This is not good economic decision making for most people.
Take some time to consider all the pools you have enjoyed over the years and think back about how you used them, and compare it to what you want for your own backyard pool. For playing games, lounging, floating around and even just for cooling down, a shallower design will truly provide a more enjoyable experience.
