Pools can be dangerous places, and regular readers of this column will be aware that we install the Katchakid Pool Safety Net here in Spain, but pool safety goes a lot further than the prevention of drowning. F’rinstance. I’m forever advising our clients to keep glasses and bottles away from the pool area and here’s why.

A couple of years ago we were called out to a pool where an accident had taken place. There had been a pool party the previous evening and, somehow, a glass had been left on the steps. When the pump started the morning the jets washed the glass off the steps and it rolled into the pool. About 11a.m. the teenage son jumped into the shallow end and landed on the glass. The glass shattered under his foot, lacerating his sole and slicing the tendons of his foot. He was hospitalised for emergency surgery and spent the rest of the summer hopping about. ‘Not a good start to ze ‘oliday’, as the French might put it. Like so many ex-pats, the family was not covered by Medical Insurance. That was just the start of their financial troubles.

Clear glass is invisible in water and so, wishing to avoid further accidents, the parents agreed, over the phone, with our advice that the pool should be emptied to ensure that all remnants of the broken glass were removed. The pool was on an Urbanisation without main drains and so the pool had to be emptied by tanker lorries at a cost of €520. The tanker company could not begin the work for a week or so and in that time the pool went green (all chlorine having been depleted by the blood in the water), the pH rose and the walls of the pool and the sandfilter became badly calcified.

We carried out the repairs to the pool; we acid-washed the walls, replaced the sand in the filter and arranged for the pool to be re-filled by the same tanker driver – at a further cost of €660 for the water. Perhaps in total the whole affair cost the owners somewhere around €5-6000 including the private medical bills. Quite an expensive party, all in all!

Never take glasses or bottles, or glass ashtrays, or lamps, etc. near the pool. The biggest problems in that little list are the glasses, because the chances of dropping and breaking a glass rise as the contents are drained! Use unbreakable barware near the pool.

The advantage of Polycarbonate is that it is unbreakable in normal use and is therefore safe to use around the pool, it looks and feels like traditional glass, is microwave-safe and good for 2000 dishwasher cycles. Click-Clack, who make their elegant polycarbonate ‘glasses’ in New Zealand, guarantee their hand-finished products for 5 years. We have a supply of Polycarbonate Barware in stock and a page of our website dedicated to them. It’s not cheap but it’s a lot less expensive than the scenario outlined above! Swim safe.

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Ken Walker is the Director of PoolSchool and Deep Blue Pools. Phone 952 499 059 Copyright remains with author.