It's almost pool-opening time!

Let’s face it -- It’s hard to be socially distant in the most social place in our community. So, if you hope to open your community’s pool this year after last year’s wash-out, you’ve got your work cut out for you. Things may be looking up as far as COVID-19 is concerned, but the use of a communal swimming pool still calls for caution even as the pandemic (hopefully!) winds down. So, we thought we’d share a few tips that might make things easier.

If you went ahead and opened your pool for the summer of 2020, you got a good idea of what works and what doesn’t. But for those of us whose pools have been on ice since Labor Day of 2019, let’s think this through.

Restricting the size of crowds and spacing folks out are the main priorities. Neither is easy. To start with, consider limiting pool use strictly to residents and not allowing guests. Guests have always been hard to regulate anyway, so it makes sense to use limited pool capacity solely for those who call your community home, at least this summer.

Once you’ve figured out the safe capacity of your pool for social distancing, you’ve got to figure out some way of equitably distributing pool access. You’ll find that a large percentage of your residents have no real interest in the pool, while certain others embrace this amenity passionately. Let residents reserve a weekend hour on your website or via email. Maybe you could provide each household with a specified number of tickets per month, and each ticket can be redeemed for a pool reservation. Or perhaps it will work better for you if you assign each building or range of numbers a specific color, say, with the pool open for “blue” residents on Saturday and “green” residents on Sunday, then shifting the order for the next weekend.

If pool space is limited, prohibit floats and toys. Stash an appropriate number of your chairs, chaise lounges and umbrella tables in storage for the duration.  Limited seating will act as a natural enforcer of capacity limits.

All these new rules might sound, well, unneighborly to pandemic-weary residents. Soften the “big brother” tone by recruiting some children who are among the pool’s most devoted users. Have them dress in their new swimsuits and show up poolside a few days before opening day. Use your best cell phone to video the kids reading off the safety regulations, one at a time, and then perhaps reward them with a preliminary mass splash – socially distanced, of course – to illustrate you can still have fun. Post the resulting video on your website, where it’s bound to draw more eyeballs than a preachy list alone.

And of course you know Can You Imagine has you covered with just the right product – a door hanger just for announcing the pool is open!