Pool firms getting in the swim with high-tech advances

Here are some statistics that'll make a head swim.

There are 53,000 swimming pools in Clark County -- 44 pools for every 1,000 residents.

That's one swimming pool for every five homes in the county.

And while Las Vegas does not make the National Spa and Pool Institute's list of top 10 cities -- there are 446,000 in Los Angeles and 301,000 in New York -- it beats the top five cities when the number of pools per person is figured.

They're the sort of statistics that come to mind when a national pool convention is in town.

And while Las Vegans' love affair with swimming pools probably is not what attracted the Aqua International Retail Conference & Expo to town this week, it certainly is appropriate that the latest in pools come to a town so enamored of them.

Products on display in the exhibit room show that swimming has come a long way since the days of the old swimming hole, or the creek in the woods.

Thanks to computers, it's possible to test the chemicals in your pool from afar and to make adjustments.

Remote controls allow you to adjust temperatures, jet streams and other pool functions just as you use a remote control on your television set.

Still, some advances are far less high-tech. In Clark County, one of those is a trend to higher fences, says county public information officer Rita Mincavage. The county requires fences around pools to be a minimum of 5 feet high, compared with a national average of 4 feet.

Another local trend: While most private pools may be 8 feet deep or more, the trend at hotel pools is to have depths of no more than 6 feet, according to Felix Havis, superintendent of environmental health for the Clark County Health District.

"The majority are around 5 feet or so," he said.

That may be an economic issue, he figures. The deeper you go, the more water it takes to fill and the more it costs.

And because hotel pools tend to be shallower, you won't see many diving boards because a pool must be at least 8 1/2 feet deep to have a board.

At the convention, one of the most highly advanced developments is what is billed as the world's first laser pool alarm, called a Prevent Laser Perimeter Pool Alarm System.

Les Mathews, whose company developed the product, said it will go on the open market March 1 and will retail for $600. It's designed to alert adults when a child gets too near a pool.

The pulsating alarm is not affected by wind, hail, rain and other elements -- though animals may trip it.

"Our studies showed that 95 percent of the kids who drown are under 5," Mathews said. "And there are 5,000 drownings a year."

In Clark County, 11 children under age 12 drowned in swimming pools in 1998, according to the Clark County Health District.

But for all the high-tech advancements, the best approach is a low-tech one, said Las Vegas Fire Department spokesman Tim Szymanski.

"If you've got a pool in the yard, you have to be a little more vigilant," he said.

The rules are simple, he said: Don't leave doors and gates unlocked, don't leave children alone at the pool -- even for a second to answer the phone -- and don't leave toys lying around the pool area, making it an attraction for the kids.

"The biggest thing is to look at it as if you were a kid. Think the way the kid thinks," Szymanski said.

"If he wants to get to the pool, how will he do it?"

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