Do you value your swimming pool? Time to give some feedback

I have recently learnt how to swim and now can’t get over it.
what an amazing way to cut fat while relaxing (Y)

I wish we had one 🙁 Our neighbors have one but they always crib about a reliable and stable maintenance guy which they have not been able to find yet :p

Being a keen daily swimmer, I have tried all the pools in Canberra since arriving here in December 1991. Manuka Pool is the best and very good value when you consider it has at least 3 lanes open at any one time for serious lap swimmers, wonderful eclectic music playing through speakers, beautifully kept grounds and picnic facilities, children’s pool and play area and clean spacious change-rooms. The best part is that it is run by a family who know how to manage pools and people. If only it could be open all year round – my life would be complete! Alas, I have to tolerate the too warm Erindale pool or the Tuggeranong fiasco during winter.

Snow has his people busily building a little aquatic centre at Majura Park, outside Brand Depot. They’ve been digging holes and pouring concrete since before Xmas. Looks like 2 pools 25m in length, very close to each other, and I heard they were for teaching kids to swim. So that will be another option I guess.

@terrorstorm

keep believing that they are run by halfwits and that Dickson & AIS are the only decent pools. I will keep enjoying my daily swim at Manuka that has been managed by the same family that ran it when I was a nipper in the 60s.

I am a bit slow commenting but wanted to check a couple of things first.
I am Secretary of a club that has 4 regular weekly sessions booked at one of these pools.
We only found out about the survey on here!

OK to be fair TAMS would not know which clubs have bookings or the contact details for those clubs with out a lot of mucking around.

Anyway I will now pass the link onto our members and suggest they make their rather strong negative feelings known.

Pity CISAC is not one of these. The issues with that pool have already been well covered. Suffice to say the people that know swimming and pools were not consulted when it was built. A couple I know saw the kids pool/whirlpool and immediately commented that it was an accident waiting to happen. Sure enough a child unfortunately died in that pool shortly after.

Unfortunately the one thing that most pools in Canberra have in common, is that they are run by incompetent halfwits – although this is to be expected considering the low pay and low skillset associated with the job.

Dickson and the AIS are the ONLY two decent pools around. They have the best water quality and are the cleanest facilities by far. Not sure about Dickson’s prices, but the AIS is much cheaper than CISAC, Phillip or Civic/Tuggerz, and it is by far the best pool of the lot. Only drawback is the limited availability of the pool and lack of a play area for children.

CISAC is unfortunately a complete botch up of a pool, us belco residents waited a long time for this pool to open up, and it has been a complete disappointment. The bottom of the 25m/leisure pool has been lifting off the ground for years, and there are now splits of several metres in certain places, yet management don’t want to fix this because it would mean lost revenue. Instead they’ve just thrown some rubber mats down on top. The water quality and cleanliness in both pools is terrible, there was a front page article in the canberra times a couple years back about this. There used to be a watergun which gave a child an electric shock, so it was removed, but the metal stump has been left behind because it would cost more money to remove this. There was a large fibreglass mushroom that fell on top of a child, so it was removed. The whirlpool has not worked in years, the showers often don’t work, there are cockroaches everywhere, yet nothing is ever done. The tyrants that run the place are also not the friendliest bunch going round, so no point trying to suggest anything to them. Worst of all, a child died at this pool just a few months after it opened. Don’t care what the reason was – lack of staff, design fault, overcrowding, this just shouldn’t happen.

That guy who runs Phillip is also unpleasant to deal with – never going back there as long as he’s around. It’s otherwise quite a nice pool to swim at in summer, albeit with a hefty price tag.

Civic and Tuggeranong pools are run by the same company of clowns. Don’t go to civic pool in summer unless you want filthy changerooms, dirty water, and a fair chance of your wallet and keys being stolen. Also expect abuse from the adolescents if you or young children want to use the dive pool, while the staff stand around chatting to one another.

I like doing laps at the Phillip pool on a sunny day, but with my Seniors Card I can go to the Civic or Tuggeranong pools for half the price. I think the Phillip pool management are setting themselves up to fail, and then the site will be redeveloped for yet more empty office space.

Uh oh. Is this a precursor to privatisation, Phillip Pool style where entry fees are exorbitant, there are no pensioner concessions and the disabled are not admitted for free? Phillip Pool should be held up as a model on how not to run swimming pools.

How I wish we had a pool to comment on…..(she wrote from Gungahlin)….