You see the signs whenever you come into a Foss Swim School facility—no glass. We understand some of our customers strongly prefer using glass bottles, but there’s a good reason for this policy and why we enforce it so strongly. People naturally understand the risk of broken glass, but some might not understand the effect of a single accident and the repercussions that affect many families for hours or days.
If the unthinkable happens and a glass container is broken on our pool deck—a very real possibility because decks are hard surfaces—it sets the following chain of events into motion.
One accident, many effects
Here’s the protocol we followed at two of our locations when a glass container was brought onto the pool deck and accidentally broke, resulting in a significant amount of broken glass entering the water, and what we hope we never to have to do at your pool:
- The pool is cleared and all classes are stopped to allow time to assess the situation and determine if glass is in the water.
- If we confirm or suspect there is glass in the water, we drain the pool. While not a legal requirement, we go the extra mile to ensure safety for our swimmers.
- Staff then clean the pool, ensure no glass remains and get the pool back up and running as quickly as possible, even if it means working around the clock.
- Truckloads of water are brought in to speed the refilling of the pool.
- We then wait while the pool heater warms the new water up to our standard 91 degrees.
- Our water treatment system also needs time to treat and balance the new water for swimming.
Please—do not bring glass!
As you can see, a single broken glass is not only a safety issue, but ensuring that safety also affects our ability to teach and kids’ ability to learn. We will work as long as it takes to recover from any moment of misfortune to minimize the impact on our students and families, but as these types of incidents are entirely preventable, we ask you help as well by only bringing non-glass containers to the pool.
Thanks for your cooperation, and thanks for contributing to FOSS being a safe, healthy place for kids to learn. Happy swimming!
