June 2020: Australia Review Finished and Denmark Under Way
In June 2020 we finished our latest review of Australia and went through 171 of Denmark's 223 listings, about 450 listings in all. We also removed pools with water too warm for lap swimming and explain why we are staying in Scandinavia.
June 2020 was a month of listing reviews, and this pool listings update covers about 450 of them. We finished our latest review of every listing in Australia and went through 171 of the 223 listings in Denmark.
Listing reviews
In June we reviewed all the listings in South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia, which finished our latest review of Australia. We also went through 171 of the 223 listings in Denmark, for a total of about 450 listings reviewed and updated.
We also restructured the Danish part of the database to reflect the 2007 switch from counties to administrative regions.
Pools removed for warm water
While reviewing the Australian pools, we purged many listings for pools whose water is too warm for lap swimming. These pools are based in purpose-built swimming schools and generally keep their water above 90ºF (32ºC). That is a good temperature for teaching infants to swim, but we do not consider it suitable for swimming laps. We removed them even when they offered public lap-swimming times.
Plans for July
Under normal circumstances we would review New York and New Jersey next, but we decided to give those states more time to recover from COVID-19.
The choice also reflects how we collect information. We can usually get more current, useful information from non-English websites than from English ones for pools in the United States. European pools are almost always municipal facilities, and their websites are transparent about descriptions, admission charges and similar details. Pools in the United States are a mix. Public pools are usually fairly transparent, YMCAs often need a telephone call for temperature and price information, and private clubs almost always need at least one call and often several.
While so many U.S. facilities are on hold, calling them would take a lot of time for little information. We are therefore staying with Scandinavia for the time being and expect to try New York and New Jersey in a month or two.