We’re building an in-ground pool. There will not be a diving board.
However, my son will be a teen some day and he and his friends no doubt will be diving into the deep end from the pool edge. The builder says a 5’ depth in the deepest end is standard and that going to 6’ of depth adds much expense due to need for a longer pool (to accommodate the slope) and greater need for re-inforcing the sides/bottom.
I once had to pull a drowned man out of a pool and later learned he had hit his head while diving (after drinking, and in the shallow end, but, still scary). So I want to be safe. However, maybe I’m worrying too much.
Any doctors or engineers with advice about whether 5’ depth is adequate?
IANA engineer/doctor but I used to swim on a team and I also have some experience working as a lifeguard at a pool club. While some may disagree with me, the difference between 5’ and 6’ when it comes to diving is minimal to the point where it does not matter much. Olympic regulation pools have a minimum depth requirement of 2 meters (about 6.5 ft) and that is only because swimmers need space for turning at the ends. It has nothing to do with diving off of the blocks.
In my experience, most people who swam competitively have learned the proper way to dive start. This means that they are fully capable of diving into reasonably shallow water safely. As a former lifeguard, I would not recommend diving into either depth because I know how easy it is to hit your head on the bottom in 12’ of water.
The few times that I experienced rescues and assists at the pool club where I worked, the depth of the pool was less than 5’. All of these instances were accidents that would have occurred regardless of the pool depth.
The issue of depth is going to rely more on what your primary concern is. However, if your concern is for responsible use by people who are knowledgeable in swimming, then I would say that there is no real difference between 5’ and 6’.
I concur with blace81 here. Six feet isn’t really any better for diving than 5 feet. Unless they know how to dive like a swimmer, they would clonk their head at either depth.
There are really too many variables, and no analytical way to solve for them, to give a number answer. Advice based on personal experience is the best you will get.
No swimmer needs 2 meters to do a flip turn ( or an open turn). Any swimmer putting any part of his/her body that deap during a turn or any part of the race would lose the race. Unless a person is really tall (even taller than the average Olympic swimmer) he can perfrom a flip in the swallow end of most pools.
Here are some videos of swimmers including them turning:
When I was a kid growing up in SoCal, 8 feet was the “standard” depth of home backyard swimming pools. You could hit your head at the deepest point, but only by diving off the roof of the 2-story house, as was proven one day by a very accident prone neighbor kid. He just tapped his head on the bottom, but he did manage to do it.
Having done lifeguard duty at public / school pools for several summers …
As a practical matter for the OP, playing kids/teens will dive off the edge into the water all around the pool’s periphery. The depth of the deepest point is not the issue; the depth all around is. IF you have a diving board (and appropriate depth under it) you’ll channel much of the diving to there. Absent that, kids’ll jump from anyplace, except maybe the shallowest part.
I really, really wonder about the idea that backyard pools are now being built 5 & 6 feet deep. Sounds to me like simple cost-cutting by contractors, much as the 12-oz “pound” is now the standard way canned ground coffee is sold. I’d suggest calling a couple other contractors for comparison.
I was beginning to doubt the 2 meter measurement but I remembered the depth from both swimming and an architecture project. The FINA site supports this minimum depth in an Olympic regulation pool.
This is a wonderful example of why we should not take everything that our coaches tell us as fact. After I thinking about it, I realized that my coach made a point of this in order to encourage us to dive for distance and not depth. My mistake.
Bottom line, theres no real difference between 5 and 6 feet in depth when it comes to irresponsible use.
I have a 9 foot end where my diving board is. Nobody has ever touched the bottom without doing it intentionally. I love the board, with adults letting the kids not get too out of control they are a huge hit.
As I kid I cracked my head pretty good going head first into the 4 foot area without putting my hands out first. My own damn fault, but tell that to a 12 year old.
I think** LSLguy** has a point, I’d ask another pool contractor about the depths. Yes bigger is more expensive but going a foot deeper shouldn’t be that big of a deal.
The 2 meter rule for Olympic and World Championship is about decreasing the swim times not safety. But you are right for the Olympics the minumum depth is 2 meters.
I don’t think that’s what the rule is saying though. I think they are trying to say that the floor of the diving well may rise, but not less then 1.8m. That’s why at FINA events they tend to have a seperate diving area. I can’t imagine trying to dive a off a meter board into a 1.8 meter pool, that would be crazy.
I would say that a pool 5-6’ would be too shallow to dive in, but when I was in high school we started on the shallow end, which was around 3 1/2 feet. They changed those to the deep end after I graduated. There are still colleges and other pools that have diving blocks into 4-5 feet of water. The pool I swim at is that way.
