Me and some of my buddies snuck into our hotel hottub after it was closed. The maintenance guy caught us and reamed us out. Then, he explained to us why the hot tub gets closed every night. Apparently, by the end of the day of use by spring breakers - the hot tub is close to 20% urine*. They have to chlorinate the piss out of it** at night to make it safe for the next day. We were pretty much marinating in pure bleach - awesome!
*probably exaggerated - just reporting what I was told.
**see what I did there?
Hot tubs in general are tricky things to keep maintained. The amount of water is very small and they have high turnover. Every person who comes in to the tub brings in their share of stuff that binds to the chlorine, using it up. Additionally, since the water is hot you tend to sweat, which also binds to the free chlorine. Also, the water is hot, which speeds up all the chemical reactions. Finally, there’s geometry. The surface area of the hot tub is much greater relative to its volume than the surface area of a pool, so chlorine is going to evaporate out much faster.
Combine all this with a bunch of drunk people spilling their beer and what have you, and the chances that the chlorine levels are out of whack is pretty high. I doubt the tub is 20% urine, as it would have a distinct smell and yellow cast by that point, but Im sure it’s pretty gross.
A urine stained bathing suit? You’re peeing while submersed in water. Any bit of anything that comes in contact with your now very diluted urine is immediately being rinsed with chlorinated water.
I’m saying that if you pee in your swimsuit, no one need ever know if you don’t tell them. In fact, someone has probably peed in the pool while standing next to you and you didn’t even notice. There just isn’t that much there to do the staining.
The other thing is that most stains happen when the staining agent is absorbed into the material and then bonds to it in some way. If your swimsuit is already wet (because you’re in the water already) the fibers aren’t going to absorb the pee.
As for taking a dump in your swimsuit, that’s something else. I don’t know anyone who has voluntarily done it, and if you get solids that are trapped in your suit, they’re going to get rubbed in and then probably make stains.
I tend to stay away from pools with pool bars. Pull up a chair one day and watch how some people can sit there drinking for hours and never get out to have a pee.
When I was in high school, a kid went up on the 3 meter dive board, dropped trou, and crapped into the pool. They immediately evacuated the pool and shut it down for the rest of the day. The school drained the pool, refilled it, and billed the kid’s parents, giving the kid the option of working it off with community service (picking up trash on campus for 8 hours every Saturday for the rest of the school year).
Our biology teacher said it was overkill, and shocking the pool with extra chlorine would have been enough from a public health standpoint. The administration knew it was overkill, too. The draining and billing was done mainly as a “damn it, get your kid under control” slap to the parents, with a side effect of calming down squeamish students who might have been reluctant to use the pool.
Yonks ago, I remember reading a story about massage parlour hot-tubs, and how guys would take advantage of a pre massage soak to “last longer”.
Not remarkable in itself. Except that about two weeks later I was talking to a colleague that was telling me all about how his band had shot a video in a massage parlour hot-tob. When I told him about what goes on in them the look on his face was priceless…
