Dive Shops and pools...

[AevnsGrandpa]

Some questions for all you dive shop owners out there.

In my readings through this webboard I have found that many of you have a pool so your customers can try out new equipment, practice skills, etc. and this to me is a big attraction and convience for your customers.

My local dive shop doesn't have a pool and I am thinking about asking the owner if he has ever thought about working out some sort of agreement with any of the local pools in our town, (public, academic, or private) for his customers to use said pool for such activities as I listed above.

My question is, what all legal and insurance requirements did you have to have or meet to have a pool and what forms do you have your customers sign as a waiver to use it. If any of you use a pool that is not your own, what did you have to do to use it? And how often to you make available and at what cost to divers?

I just see this as so much of an advantage for the diver. Granted there is just the one LDS in my town so there is no reason he would have to or need to do this other than making it better for us customers.

We have used the pool at one of our 2 local universities for a "fun night" so I know there has been communication at some point to do even this.

Thanks for any and all comments. I am just trying to arm myself with needed info before I talk to the owner.

Jeff

 

[MikeFerrara]

I don't have a shop any more but I used to.

All we did as far as insurance was to name the pool owner as an additional insured on our policy. The last policy I had didn't even require that but pool owners like to get a piece of paper showing that you have insurance that covers them.

The real problem comes in with pool availability and price. We paid between $25 and $55 per hour for pool use but it still wasn't easy to get in.

The Y was always too busy. Some schools would let us in but they were usually shut down in the summer so it was a winter only thing.

Most of the health clubs and hotels had lap pools that were too shallow to teach diving in.

The local school corp wanted $450/night.

The Girl scout camp had a lousy pool in the first place but we lost use of it when they made a policy that stated there couldn't be any non-girlscout adults on the premesis when girls were in the camp.

We lost the boy scout pool when a new guy took over and commited the pool to some one else even though we already had it arranged.

We ended up traveling about 50 miles the wrong direction to use a city pool out in the middle of nowhere that was 100 miles from where I live...meaning that teaching a class meant getting home at 2 am.

I wish your dive shop luck. the difficulty with pools was actually a big part of our decission to close the shop when we did.

 

[AevnsGrandpa]

Thanks for your input Mike.

Any others?

Jeff

 

[mike_s]

Finding a pool that will allow scuba divers is always not easy to come by.

We only have two indoor somewhat public pools in the city I live in and there are problems with scuba divers in each.

one pool is at the local college which now has shut down it's aquatic program completely due to cost problems. But when the pool was open, they had to quit
allowing scuba classes by dive shops at the pools. Students were dropping heavy
weights and tanks on the tile floor and breaking the tiles. Since people are barefoot on the tiles, you often can cut your feet on them. Example, I cut my foot really bad one time on the pool edge on the tile because it was broken.

The other local pool is so packed with activities every night and day that you can't schedule free time for anything, much less scuba and they didn't want scuba people in there breaking stuff.

So pool owners would mostly not want scuba people there. Call it biased, but a few bad experiences cause pool owners to completely exclude divers.

mike