ALOHA POOLS & SPAS — DEEP DIVE PODCAST
National Water Safety Month: What Every Pool Owner Needs to Know
Hosts: John Watts & Brad Cook · Guest: Tess (Marketing)
INTRODUCTION
JOHN
Welcome to another edition of the Aloha Pools and Spas Deep Dive Podcast. Along with me today is Brad Cook. We want to talk about National Water Safety Month — the month of May. I was reading a trade publication and thought, we really need to get this out, because swimming pool season is upon us. If we say one thing that helps somebody prevent a catastrophic event, we will have done our job.
STATE LAWS: POOL ALARMS & THE KATIE BETH LAW
JOHN
One thing I wanted to start with is the Katie Beth Law. In Tennessee, we’re required to put an alarm on every new pool — and Tennessee is currently the only state requiring this. If a 15-pound object is dropped in the pool, the alarm sounds. It has to be mounted on the pool and pass inspection by a local electrical inspector. It applies to all new pools going forward.
JOHN
Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of pool alarms. Any time you have a false sense of security — the alarm fails, the battery dies, or you turn it off because it keeps going off on false reads — that’s dangerous. Anything that lulls you into complacency is a problem. We build pools in Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas, and Tennessee is the only state requiring it in those markets.
BRAD
Virginia has something too. When I was going over the National Water Safety guidelines for this podcast, I noticed several states have supplemental laws. Virginia was one of them.
THE VIRGINIA GRAEME BAKER ACT & DRAIN ENTRAPMENT
JOHN
There’s also the Virginia Graeme Baker Act, which required manufacturers of main drains to make anti-entrapment drain covers. Virginia Graeme Baker lost her life due to entrapment in a main drain. After the act passed, manufacturers had to make grates more concave — harder to block off — and required two main drains in many situations, so if one gets covered, the other maintains flow.
BRAD
I was recently at an older motel pool in Kentucky. They have a suction relief valve in front of the pump. If the main drain gets blocked, air is introduced into the line and suction stops immediately — a vacuum release. The old drains used to pull up to 350 lbs of pressure. Even a small adult could get pinned.
JOHN
We had a local incident in Dresden years ago — I won’t get graphic — but a child sat on a 4-inch drain line while a kiddie pool was being drained. The child survived, but it was very serious. Safety is not abstract. These are real situations that happen in our communities.
RULE 1 — ALWAYS SUPERVISE CHILDREN NEAR WATER
BRAD
Always watch children in or near water — never leave them unattended. I know that sounds like common sense, but they’ve timed it: if the doorbell rings and you step away from a bathtub for just two or three minutes, a child can slide underwater in six inches of water or less. It only takes enough water to cover the mouth and nose.
JOHN
This hit close to home for me. Around 1999 I was putting a new liner in my pool. There was about two feet of water in the deep end and my son Case — two or three years old, couldn’t swim — was nearby. I looked around and he was gone. When I got to the pool, his older brother Hunter had already gotten to him. He was down at the bottom. It takes no time at all. You just cannot be too careful.
BRAD
It’s not just pools either. Toddlers have drowned in five-gallon buckets. They topple in, get stuck, and can’t right themselves. It can happen with far less water than you’d imagine.
FENCES & BARRIERS
JOHN
Many cities and insurance companies require fencing — typically a minimum of four feet, though some areas require more. Above-ground pools have historically been their own barrier, as long as the ladder is locked up. If I had young grandchildren, I’d also put an alarm on the back door. The fence keeps neighborhood kids out, but what alerts you when your own door opens?
RULE 2 — LEARN TO SWIM
BRAD
It can never be too early. They even have baby swim lessons — you push an infant gently underwater and they naturally hold their breath, then start kicking. It’s remarkable to watch. Building that comfort early can be life-saving.
JOHN
We spent most of the winter trying to get swim lessons in every Aloha location. Right now we have an instructor in Union City who stays busy four or five days a week. If you’re certified to teach swimming, you can use our pools at no charge. That is the single most important thing you can do: make sure everyone in your family knows how to swim.
BRAD
People assume everyone can swim, but in Marine Corps boot camp I saw a consistent group of 18-year-old recruits — maybe 13 to 15 percent — held back because they’d never had access to a pool or swimming hole. They came from different backgrounds and simply never had the opportunity. It was a real eye-opener.
RULE 3 — STAY AWAY FROM DRAINS: A REAL STORY
JOHN
Teach children to stay away from drains. I want to bring in Tess from our marketing team — she has a firsthand story about this.
TESS
I have an identical twin sister named Tiffany. When we were about eight, we were playing in our grandmother’s jacuzzi tub. She went under the water and didn’t come up. I looked down and she was flailing. At first I thought she was playing — I was actually giggling — but then I saw the shock in her eyes. Her hair had been sucked into the drain. I grabbed behind her head so it wouldn’t pull at her scalp, and pulled her free. She jokes sometimes that I saved her life. Which I guess maybe I did.
JOHN
Most jacuzzi tubs today have multiple suction fittings specifically to prevent this. That’s exactly why plumbing codes evolve — because of incidents like Tess’s. Parents and grandparents just don’t always know to warn kids about drain entrapment. Now you do.
RULE 5 — SAFETY DEVICES: COVERS, ALARMS & GATES
JOHN
Automatic pool covers are one of the single safest investments you can make. Ours has a keypad — you enter a code before it opens. If someone falls onto the cover, it can support an entire family. Some are rated to hold 2,000 pounds. In the ’90s they were a luxury item; today we install them on roughly 80% of new in-ground pools.
JOHN
You can choose solid or mesh. Solid keeps UV out but needs a pump to manage water on top. Mesh lets water and debris through naturally — great in leaf-heavy yards. Both are safe options. If your pool has custom features like fountains that require special cable routing, the manufacturer may have you sign off that it no longer meets full safety-cover certification — but it will still hold a person in the vast majority of the pool area.
JOHN
In many jurisdictions, a certified safety cover can replace the fence requirement — but check with your local municipality first. Tennessee still requires the pool alarm regardless. And make sure your gate is actually locked. I’ve been to countless pools where the owner says, “Oh, just go around, it’s unlocked.” That has to change.
BRAD
There are also camera-based systems worth knowing about. One called Swim Cam uses motion detection and sends an alert to your phone any time something enters the frame. Another uses a laser beam along all four sides of the pool — if the beam breaks, an alarm sounds. A basic Ring camera with motion alerts can also work as an affordable alternative.
RULE 6 — GET CPR CERTIFIED
JOHN
Know how to perform CPR on children and adults, and get certified. It’s one of those skills you’d rather have and never need than need and not have. And yes — the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” is legitimately the right beat for chest compressions.
BRAD
I’ll be honest — I haven’t refreshed my CPR training in years, and the guidelines have changed since I learned. That’s on me, and I’m going to fix it. We’d encourage everyone listening to do the same. It might be worth doing a whole episode on getting certified together.
OCEAN & OPEN WATER: RIP CURRENTS ARE REAL
BRAD
When I was about 15, on a church trip in Florida, there was a red flag flying because of a tropical storm offshore — and we were on the beach anyway. A woman and her two daughters got pulled out into the ocean. Several of us swam out. We reached the girls and got them to safety, but their mom was even further out. I swam to her, and the moment I reached her, she let go of the raft and grabbed me. I genuinely thought I was going to drown. I remember standing on the ocean floor as waves hit, trying to hold her up. Eventually a lifeguard with a rope reached us. I’ve never been so tired in my life. And we never should have been in the water with that red flag up in the first place.
JOHN
A trade publication editor I read — she’s from Hawaii — mentioned that in her state, every child learns to swim by fourth grade. It’s a statewide requirement. I think every state should do that. Swimming is healthy, it builds confidence, and more than anything, it’s a basic safety skill when you live near lakes, rivers, or pools.
POOL PARTIES: CONSIDER HIRING A LIFEGUARD
JOHN
If you’re hosting a pool party with a lot of adults and a lot of kids, consider hiring a lifeguard. We’ve heard of tragedies at parties where everyone is swimming and nobody notices the one child in trouble until it’s too late. Drowning is often silent. Children don’t call out or scream — they’re too busy trying to breathe. It happens in plain sight while people are on their phones or holding a drink. It can take as little as 20 seconds.
THE BOTTOM LINE
JOHN
You can have all the technology — fences, alarms, covers — but if the pool is open and your child can’t swim and you don’t know where they are, that’s the real risk. Know where your kids are at all times, especially around water.
BRAD
Don’t let any technology substitute for supervision. That is the key takeaway from this entire conversation.
JOHN
We’re in the business of selling pools, and they’re a world of fun for a world of people. But I would rather not sell another one if I thought it was going to lead to something tragic. It’s a tough subject, but it needed to be discussed. Be safe out there — and as always, dive safely.
Want swim lessons or have a pool safety question?Reach out to John directly at john.watts@alohapoolsusa.com — or if you’d like to be a guest on the Deep Dive Podcast, drop him a line.
