Ditto. I was a lifeguard when I was young too, and always took a shower first.
First thing I did before going out to the pool.
The only public pool I ever had to take a shower was in a hotel in Montreal. The pool attendant told us (school group) that we needed to take a shower and pointed toward the showerrooms. I don’t go to public pools (hotels excluded) much though.
So we were told, back in the days I had to take care of the pool chemicals. The whole point of adding chlorine is basically to bind up the icky stuff floating around in the pool – if it’s busy reacting with AquaNet, it’s not doing much for the bacteria or whatnot.
More to the point, though – you can smell 'em. There’s always women who insist that they don’t want to get their hair wet and ruin their hairdo. Inevitably, their hair gets wet, and the area around them starts to smell of hairspray or whatever “product” they’ve gooped into their hair. Likewise, with perfumes.
One of the reasons for my annoyance at this is several years of arguing with the watercizing hairdo ladies convinced of their own entitlement at the expense of everyone else’s enjoyment of the pool facilities. We used to contemplate getting out the fire hoses and squirting them down when we saw dry hair in the pool.
I don’t understand. What kind of sauna do you have that is not enclosed, but instead is open to the swimming pool?
No, actaully I was talking about adults, many of them in their late 30s and 40s who have been swimming all their life. This includes doctors, lawers and other professionals. I can’t remember one who has taken a shower before getting in the pool.
As for the saunas, I’ve almost always seen them outside of the locker rooms and would consider them part of the pool as well.
I don’t think this is an issue of hygiene. Regardless of sweat and some minimal bacteria from the steam room, any pool is still going to be miles cleaner and clearer than the kind of pond everyone dreams of having a rope to swing out over and jump into. Similarly, it’s probably a lot cleaner than most lakes and oceans near civilization, and cleaner than pretty much any river near the outlet. Yet we’re perfectly fine swimming in any of those, and not the worse for wear.
This just strikes me as a big restroom vs. kitchen type thing, where everyone is obsessed with the cleanliness of the bathroom, even though the grand majority of everything in the house that is potential biowaste is in the kitchen, and hence the kitchen is more germ and bacteria-happy.
Bacteria does kill, but for the most part unless you are very old and get a gaping wound at just the right moment in the pool/lake/ocean/river, you ain’t going to catch jack diddly. Trying to keep people from having fun so that you can keep the water clearer than all the rest of the 99% of the water in the world that’s a lot filthier, that you would still happily swim in, is just silly.
None, and I’m starting to think you’re being deliberately obtuse. Either that, or swimming pools/spas are set up totally differently in your area.
“The swimming area enclosure” is the enclosed space which houses the swimming pool, the sauna and other stuff. To get to this enclosure, you walk through the locker room, past the showers housed within the locker room and out the door to the swimming area enclosure. The sauna has it’s own door, of course, but you have to walk past past the pool and open the cedar door into the sauna. Down the way a bit, also alongside the pool, is the steamroom door. Over in the corner is the hottub. It’s all in one large enclosure, with the only public access being through the locker room.
“The swimming pool” is that large open body of water in the middle without bubbles in it. If I were to sauna and then shower before going in the pool, it means walking past the pool, out of the swimming area and back into the locker room to the showers. I’ve never seen anyone do that, ever. You shower before you leave the locker room and enter the swimming area, but you don’t keep running back in there until you’re done with your spa/swimming routine.
If anything, the floor of the locker room is dirtier than the sauna and steamroom, and you’d be tracking MORE bacteria in by going back in there repeatedly to shower. Still not dangerous levels, but more than are released from your sweat in the sauna.
Again, sweat isn’t dirty. It’s salt and water, not filth. We’ve been taught it’s dirty and gross by people who like to sell us soaps and detergents and deodorants and perfume, but sweat by itself isn’t much of anything.
I seem to be out numbered but I agree that this practice is disgusting and I would be getting out of the pool immediately. Although, I will say, I have a touch of OCD and find public pools questionable as well. However, people who use the pool as a shower to wash off their sweat are inconsiderate and quite frankly, disgustingly selfish. Take a cold shower and keep your sweat waste out of my water.
I am being deliberately obtuse??? You are the one suggesting that if you exit the sauna enclosure, that you are somehow not entering the swimming pool enclosure. That the sauna enclosure is a separate enclosure within the swimming pool area does not change the interpretation that, by going out the sauna door you are entering the pool area.
The entire point is moot as regards to the St. Louis City health regs that I cited, anyway; that set-up would probably not be allowed.
And, again and repeatidly, the dirt or bacteria of sweat is not an issue here. The issue is (1) it messes up the pool chemistry, so knock it off, (2) it is disgusting and rude to the other swimmers, so knock it off, and (3) it’s probably against the goddamn health regulations.
I can’t believe the number of people here who are using “everybody else does it” as the justification for being a jackass, too. Didn’t your mothers ever have a talk with you about everbody else jumping off bridges? Look at the pool regs, they’re required to be posted; if it says you have to take a shower before entering, take the damn shower. You won’t melt.
From the appropriate Minnesota code:
I’d question your assumption that the steamroom is a breeding ground for bacteria. People going from the steamroom to the pool aren’t going to expose you to any more bacteria than you would be exposed to by going into the steamroom itself. If they were a bacterial health hazard, the relevant codes wouldn’t likely permit them.
You know, urine is sterile but I’m pretty sure everyone would be upset if someone walked out of the sauna and took a wiz in the pool.
I think this falls into the category of being gross. I don’t care if I can’t get cooties from sweat, I think it’s gross. I wouldn’t want the sauna guy to fling his sweat on me. Would anyone? I don’t want that same sweat floating in the pool.
I don’t personally think it’s a big deal to not shower before getting in the pool provided you weren’t dirty to begin with. So if you get in the pool without showering after your office job, big deal. You’re probably not that much dirtier than after you took your shower in the morning. But if you’re dripping with slimey sweat, please rinse it off first.
Maybe my attitude denies someone the joy of being able to go from the sauna to the pool, but we live in a society. I won’t attempt to deny sauna guy the right to enjoy a cool dip somewhere else, but when he’s in a public place, he should obey the public rules.
You should definitely tell management. This is exactly the type of thing that will cause people to find another gym. If I joined that gym to swim, I would not keep my membership.
From the code you cited-
"(1) All steam room/bath house rooms, restrooms and bathrooms used in connection with the licensed premises shall be constructed of materials which are impervious to moisture, bacteria, mold or fungus growth. The floor-to-wall and wall-to-wall joints shall be constructed to provide a sanitary cove with a minimum radius of one (1) inch. "
Sort of OT and not about the shower/no shower topic, but that’s talking about the structure. Don’t take that statement to mean all bacteria is killed in that environment. There could still be airborne bacteria, and all you’d need would be a loose tile and the place could be crawling with bacteria or mold. It’d really depend on how well the steam room was maintained. You could be sitting next to a person coughing up a lung, or rubbing mucus on the bench.
Yeah, but that guy could then get in the pool.
If you are so germophobic that this really bothers you, a public pool may not be the ideal environment for you. It would sure be nice if people showered properly, but honestly, are people going to really soap down good and proper in all corners in a public pool shower before jumping in - if you are lucky, most of them will wet down.
Since the incidence of pool borne illnesses is pretty darn low (and usually traced to fecal matter from small children and not adults who didn’t shower) I’d say you are overreacting - the risk isn’t high enough to bother. Is it gross - sure - public places are generally disgusting if you spend too much time thinking about it - pools, bathrooms, telephones, doctor’s waiting rooms, buses, hotel rooms).
Or they could put in an extra shower near the pool, like they have at outdoor pools for rinsing off. It would be a compromise since you wouldn’t bring soap out there, but it would be something.
True, I’m just saying that given there are regulations around steamrooms just as there are around swimming pools, the OP shouldn’t necessarily assume that the steamroom is a germ-infested cesspit. I don’t see that it’s necessarily a more bacteria-laden place than the pool itself.