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Pool opening times?


Turners
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I am wondering what other people will say about this as when such times are only available then they exclude us.

As a family we have been known to swim before breakfast if we can. Not for long, but rather like doing that. And then as we tend to be out all day we rather like a swim in the evening. You see for me a holiday is about a little decadence and doing what we feel like when we want.

 

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We can't 'do' sun but in the heat of summer would like to be around a pool in the evening (my kids might like mornings but I'm a stranger to them!). In fact our best time recently with a pool was a hotel in Spain, after the heat of the beach and town and...

Having said that there might be safety and/or noise reasons why some limit might apply.

John

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We don't put any restrictions on at all.  We put the automatic cleaner in around 9pm and take it out at 0815 - but it only operates between 5am and 8 am and we tell people this and advise them to just move it to the side if they are swimming after 9pm.  The people we have staying here at present used the pool around 11pm last night and before 0730 this morning - with no problems.

 

As for covering it - we explain the benefits of covering it and suggest that they open it when they want to use it and cover it afterwards.  Our pool is only shared between us and the people staying in the gite so this may make a difference - but I don't think our visitors would be very happy with restrictions meaning they could only use the pool for ten hours a day.

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If and only if you included the pool opening time on the front page of you website/brochure I would say fair enough. Otherwise I would expect to be able to go swimming at 6 am and 10 pm.  I have done both in hotels in most parts of the World and given that gite rentals seems higher per night per person than good city centre hotels it does not seem unreasonable.    

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I think our current guests would not appreciate restrictions.  They were in the pool till midnight last night. Mind you they are Ozzies and Kiwis and are probably still on antipodean time!

So I think restrictions would be a pain in the bottom.

Deby

17 Charente Maritime sweltering and still not a drop of rain in sight.  Now tell me there is not another canicule on its way!

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We too considered setting time limits for swimming, for many reasons. However, when we asked our guests how they would feel about that, they said they wouldn't like it. Granted, we did say that it was something we were considering for the future, not the present. Like someone else said earlier, these people are here on vacation and they want to do what they want, when they want. I'm still not keen on swimming in the darkness, our pool is not flood lit, but these people are adults so what do you do....

As far as putting in the vacum. We let people know when they arrive that the vacum will be put in in the evenings (when needed) and removed the next morning. Swimming is totally fine even with the vacum in the pool. No one seems to be upset with this. We also have a pool man who comes in once per week to check chemicals, clean, check equipment, etc. I cannot determine what day or time he will come - it varies, but guests are told of his existence and that he will not take too much time to complete his tasks. No one needs to leave the pool area.

We have never had a complaint. But, I think if we limited the time the pool was available, we wouldn't get any bookings....

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I am sure you would lose bookings by having closing times on your pool, I cetainly wouldn't book anywhere with such restrictions, also it seems a lot of you use the pool while you have guests, we dont unless they are off site then get out as soon as they return
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I agree with you Krill. I don't normally use the pool when our guests are here. When they go out, I will swim - if I have the time. Most of the time, the guests ask us why we don't use the pool. But, for me, I like having it to myself and rather figure they do too ..
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If I were booking a gite with a pool, I would either book one with exclusive use of the pool, or I would book on a larger complex with a large communal pool.

I don't really know why, but I would feel uncomfortable sharing with just one other family - especially if they were the owners (I suppose I would always feel as though I were encroaching on their space).

But that's just me! Everyone is different.

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I once stayed a gite where the owner got up a lot later than we did and consequently the pool was never ready for use until about 11am. As we had children with us who wanted to be in the pool all day, this was a bit annoying. Now, as a gite owner, I always get up early and to make sure that the pool is ready as early as possible. As we have an abri and floodlight in the pool, guests have their own key and can swim whenever they want, midnight swims are very popular! So I would hate to put restrictions on guests - basically I just fit the cleaning around whenever they aren't using the pool, they do tend to have lunch and then dinner in the evening, so there is always a créneau available for maintenence. Very interested to hear Catherine S comments about prefering an excmusive pool or sharing with more than 1 other family, I worry sometimes that having 3 cottages sharing one pool its too luch, but maybe there is safety (and more anonymity) in numbers, providing the pool and facilities are large enough!

 

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we have a pool shared between 4 gites, we tell the guests the opening times are 10am until 9pm

thats way people that put their kids to bed early don't get disterbed and those that want a lay yin the morning don't get disterbed either. and it gives me plenty of time to hoover the pool.

i dream of getting an auto cleaner 

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When we've hired gites with pools in the past we've usually been with my parents (not many gites for two people have pools with exclusive use).  My dad is one of those mad people who get up at 5am every morning and he was always in the pool by 6am.  Whilst my parents were having breakfast, my husband would be in the pool, in the heat of the afternoon my mum and I would cool off in the pool.  Early evening my dad would have another swim and later on, if the weather was hot, my husband and I would be back in there - so restricted times would be a no go for us too.

In fact, one gite was brilliantly designed, it was a large farmhouse and the owners lived in one side but it was sort of back to back, rather than side by side, so they had their verandah one side of the building and we were the other side, both with the gardens in front, so there was no reason every to bump into each other.  However, the pool was at the side of the house, but slightly towards their side.  Although they said that they would never use the pool when we were around, we could see onto their verandah from the pool and it did restrict us from using it quite a bit because we felt we were intruding in their private space.  We only ever used the pool for swimming, never for just lounging by or sitting in to cool down.

Wish we had a pool now.  30 degrees at 6pm in Normandy is just not acceptable

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I think Mikey's idea is a good one.

If it is a single gite, with exclusive use of a pool, then I think there should be no restrictions on opening ties.

But if there are multiple families using it, then it makes sense to have a closing time, for precisely the reasons Mikey states.

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I quite agree with Mikey, and think that as we are a family orientated gite complex with lots of things for children, the last thing any parent really wants is lots of noise at bedtime!

None of our guests has ever complained about us having opening hours for our pool and we always have peace and quiet and hope they do too.  They always say how peaceful and relaxing it is here.

We also tell our own family to come out of the pool if guests want to use it, and that all seems fine, although our littlest likes to swim and play with guest's children, and that works well too.

One point I would like to raise is a safety one.  In the evenings people are likely to have both eaten and drunk and swimming in such a state can be a very unsafe thing to do, particularly in a deep pool and this is one of the main reasons we close our pool in the late evening.  We would not like to have someone in it who was a bit the worse for drink both from the point of view of behaviour, judgement and cleanliness (being sick!).  None of us would  dream of swimming either before or after the opening times as we don't want guests to either and feel that rules for guests are rules for us too.

The one bit of advice I would like to give is always observe your own rules.  Nothing is worse than one rule for someone but anothr for someone else.  you will of course get the sort of people staying who agree that you should have rules, but surely you do not mean them to apply to them?  Hopefully only the odd ones though.

Good luck

Fil

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I take it, it is some of you gite owners who like the idea of strict regulations for their clientele.

As a mere client, I would be very annoyed if I couldn't use the facilities I had paid extra for when I wanted. A clue here, I would pay extra for a pool, even a shared one.

 

The only thing I would expect is that if it were a gite complexe then the other clients were aware of french law which states no loud noise after 10pm.

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I thought there was a legal requirement to have regulations of use, in regards to any pool that is available to the Public?  That includes renters, tenants and gites guests. 

At our new domain we were required under the reglement to adopt rules for the communal pool at the first meeting of the Syndic.

These rules are a safety requirement and have to include who to phone in an emergency.At our domain we even had to install an emergency phone in the pool house.

Therefore, I would have thought it prudent to limit pool use at night for safety and your own liability reasons. As you do not want the family of a drunken guest or child who drowns during a midnight swim, suing you on the basis it was irresponsible for you to permit it.

In my opinion having unrestricted swimming hours, especially if unsupervised children are involved, is to much of a liability for the owner.

All the places I can recall staying at had specified pool hours. Also presumably, so as not to disturb other guests, who may not appreciate revelry in the pool at 2.00 am!

In summary, this is a complicated evolving area on which you should get professional advice. As to get it wrong could prove very expensive, if one of your guests was injured or worse in your pool.

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I take it, it is some of you gite owners who like the idea of strict regulations for their clientele.

Yes, I'm a control freak, i insist all our guests return after a day out by 6pm. and that they have eaten and are in bed by no later than 10pm

i also insist that when playing boule our guests cover the boules in foam as to not make a noise.

As a mere client, I would be very annoyed if I couldn't use the facilities I had paid extra for when I wanted. A clue here, I would pay extra for a pool, even a shared one.

nobody has ever complained about the times we have set and i doubt anyone will.

 

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Interesting reading, many thanks for your replies, and I tend to agree with Mikey myself, we have three gites and lots of children coming this season.  We are also very aware of the drinking/eating situation at night should something happen, not everyone is sensible!

 

We are going to relax the times a little though!

 

Thanks

Michelle

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We have three gites with a shared pool and the pool is open 10am to 8pm. Any later and there is always the chance of noise disturbing young children who have been put to bed. HOWEVER our "pool rules" do state that the pool can be made available at other time on request. If such a request is made we usually say yes but ask them to keep the noise down if there are young children staying in other houses. Everyone always seems very happy with this arrangement. To be honest, most guests haven't even appeared before 10am and by 8pm they're nearly always eating dinner. We did have a really enjoyable midnight swim with champagne a couple of weeks ago with some regular guests !
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  • 2 weeks later...

We open our pool each day at around 10.00am and it's open until it gets dark unless we are around to supervise late night/floodlit swimming.

Our major problem is that we have a water loving dog who, if she sees the pool cover is off, will be in there like a maniac no matter how well trained she is when no water is in sight!  Having said that a season of dog swimming (last year) caused no damage to the liner/filter whereas ONE WEEK of a family with 2 kids this year has meant an extra hour on change over day scrubbing their greasy suncream scum line off already!  Thinking of only allowing couples with dogs and no children for next year! 

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