Hommocks Pool: In Hot Water?
My family belongs to Hommocks pool in Mamaroneck/ Larchmont for the summer. I have been trying to get the heat turned on for the big indoor pool. First the recreation department told me
that it was switched off because of construction but when I kept checking with them to see when it would be turned on…they directed me to the buildings department (school). The head of that department told me they never turn on the heat in the summer and that the pool is 82.5 degrees!!! funny I told him. I took my thermometer to it and it reads 72 degrees.
I pay over $30,000 a year in taxes…..I joined the pool for $475/year and I pay for 4 kids to have lessons in a pool that is too cold to learn how to swim. I have had to pull my 5 year old twins out after 15 minutes because their lips have turned blue and are shivering like crazy. All the swim instructors wear wet suits………I don’t think they would do that in 82.5 degrees.
Hoping this story can get some air. I am trying to take it a step up to the Superintendent of building services….and I have collected 70 signatures from other people at the pool.
Maddening that they are just lying to us….at least they should admit the temperature of the pool.
—theLoop will check into this.
My kids take swim lessons at Hommocks and we’ve had the same issue. My kids cry that they don’t want to go now and this week there was no bribe on earth to get them into the frigid water. It’s ridiculous, I agree. I asked a member of the pool staff when the problem would be fixed and she said they have no control over it and that I should contact the school.
I’d like to know the reason behind the icy water too.
Truly, good luck getting your concern addressed! 72 would be fine if there was warmth from the sun! My guess is that a lot of town pools in Westchester don’t heat their pools in summer, but their pools are outside. When they renovated Hommocks pool several years ago, and replaced the summertime, removable roof, they basically converted it into a year round indoor pool. They never even consulted the community/pool members about whether we wanted this pool to be remodeled in this way. We had spent many nice summers at the pool, but after this renovation was completed we joined the pool for the final time. It was just too cold–even for kids which is saying a lot!
Couldn’t agree more with the poster…..the pool is too cold year round. I’ve been told the frigid temperature is for the lap swimmers. That’s nice, but it would be nicer if they could warm it a few degrees year round to appease all members of Hommocks pool! I think we all deserve to know the truth regarding the pool temperatures and the pool management needs to listen to its ‘customers’!
How long was your thermometer in the pool? Long enough to get an accurate temp, or just enough to warm it up a little? Did you look at their thermometer to read the temp? Do you really need water temps much above 72 when it is over 90+ degrees every day. Maybe your kids don’t like swimming and use that as an excuse not to swim, I know mine do. As a taxpayer who only pays 20K a year in taxes I would be upset to learn my town was heating a pool during the summer, I think we can agree that our tax money could be well spent elsewhere.
Dear “BOBO”
First let me say that I am a better judge of my children than you are and that blue lips are a usually a good sign of being cold.
Any idiot knows how to use a thermometer….it is not an advanced piece of technology. I will explain my technique anyway. I took the temperature of the baby pool….it was 80 degrees. It took about 1 minute for that to register…….then I walked to the big indoor pool and put it in there…..also about 1 minute later the thermometer read 72 degrees……it was amazing.
As a tax payer you should maybe be upset because the building department told me they only use “digital” thermometers and that they have 6! of them so they must be accurate. I wonder why they have 6 and I wonder why we are paying for that. You may also be upset because of the silly new roof that we all paid for that doesn’t allow the sun to heat the pool.
oh and also I forgot to add…..they didn’t want to meet me at the pool for a thermometer showdown. I can only conclude that they are lying about their thermometer reading. After all if the pool was really 82.5 degrees we would all be complaining that the pool was too hot.
The pool was great when the old roof was retracted and the sun warmed the water. The pool water now is almost always very cold. For lap swimmers, that’s great. For most adults, it’s uncomfortable, but OK on a hot day. For children who have far less mass and fat than adults, it’s a genuine problem. Kids shiver and turn blue, even the older ones. Sending children to the kids pool isn’t the answer (although I’m sure the lap swimmers would love that), because the outside kids pool is too shallow for real swimming, even for smaller children. It only makes sense that if you eliminate the sun as a heat generater, you have to replace the sun with another source of heat. The ambient air temperature near the pool isn’t going to warm the water like the sun beating down on it did in the past.
I agree that the indoor pool is to cold and the outdoor pool is like a hot tub! Maybe they could send some of the cold water to the outdoor pool as it is like taking a bath.
I couldn’t agree more about the frigid pool temps. I used to really enjoy swimming in the large pool, but since the renovation it’s gloomy and chilly. My husband took the kids by himself all last summer; I just didn’t find it fun anymore. Thank goodness for parents with lakes, even if visiting them is a schlep.
The Hommocks Pool is a huge disappointment. Who wants to swim in an indoor pool in the summer? Not me. There are so many things wrong with the Hommocks Pool. First, it is indoor, which is absolutely ridiculous.
Second, the way we are forced to enter the pool area is icky, disgusting, and can be inappropriate for small children, particularly boys. What mother would like her “school aged” boy to have to enter separately, through a locker room with naked men (strangers) taking showers? Other entrances exist at the pool, but they are not allowed to be used.
Third, there is no adequate place to sit near the big pool to watch kids while they are in it and you’re not. The bleachers are terrible.
Fourth, the food is horrible. Fifth, the bathrooms/locker rooms are disgusting. I could go on . . .
Finally, I cannot understand why our lovely community, which is very desirable and special, does not have an adequate, decent, attractive community pool.
Luckily our community does have the very beautiful Manor Beach. However, we still desperately need a better community pool!!!!!
Wow. Our civilization must clearly be reaching its apex when 72 degree pool temps bring out such strong negative emotions. To think there are people starving in … oh, never mind. Sure, let’s use some of these fossil fuels we all want to swear off to heat a pool in the summer. Our kids couldn’t possibly get used to 72 degree temperatures as a refuge from high heat and humidity. Of course the number of kids frolicking in the pool belies these horror stories I am reading, but the 70 signatures must mean something. My suggestion would be to move a little when in the pool – you’ll warm up, trust me! May not be as much fun as conducting temp tests, but better for you.
Dear “SWIMLIKEAROCK”……My point is…..the children are trying to LEARN how to swim…..they can’t move around a little….they can’t swim yet….they are taking their lessons in a frigid pool. Most of the really little ones don’t make it through their half an hour lesson..a lot of the signatures are from parents who have paid for lessons and have to pull their kids from the pool.
You know, Swim, it comes down to the fact that the pool gets no warmth or light from the outdoors. Swimming in a shed on a beautiful summer day isn’t fun.
I’ll add that I think the baby pool outside is just peachy. But that’s it.
Hmmm. What should we do with a couple of hundred thousand gallons of cold water in the summer time?
Use it as resource.
The pool is too cold for kids. I got my guys little swim wet suits, and they still shiver and shake. I like the idea of circulating the water with the warm outside pools. However those pools are so small the result would be a cold indoor pool and a cold outdoor pool.
How about using the cold pool water on heat exchangers on the new ventilation units they are putting on the building? The building could be cooled the pool would be warmed for the cost of installing a few pipes.
From Bobo: “I would be upset to learn my town was heating a pool during the summer, I think we can agree that our tax money could be well spent elsewhere. ”
Kudos to Bobo. I would much rather see a teacher or policeman get paid then a pool get heated in the summer.
Chilly water…….handle it!!!
I’ve been at the pool almost every day since it’s opened this year and I haven’t noticed a problem. The big pool seems filled with kids and my own 7 yo and 11 yo are in for long stretches with no complaints, as am I. I find it cool and refreshing, but certainly not chilly…I wouldn’t want it much warmer with temps in the 90s! Plus, the indoor pool is great because you don’t have to mess with sunscreen.
What should the temperature of a swimming pool be?
The decision on how warm to keep the pool is up to the individual owner. The pool temperature recommended by the American Red Cross for competitive swimming is 78° F. However, this may be too cool for young children and the elderly who may require 80° F or higher. The typical range is 78°- 82° F.
http://www.swimmingpool.info/temperature.html
best way to change things is to boycott the pool.
To “Vote,” Thanks for your suggestion that the Hommocks Pool be boycotted. In my view a boycott would probably not help the community achieve the goal of creating a better and nicer community pool. People are just desperate to have a pool to go to when the heat is so high, and this is why they accept Hommocks, and buy memberships to it. Even if a substantial number of people boycotted it and didn’t renew their memberships next time around, I don’t think this would lead the community toward the goal of creating a better community pool, because I don’t know that our community leaders find this to be a priority.
I found it interesting that everyone I happened to speak to about the opportunity for Larchmont/Mamaroneck to acquire the former Hampshire site, and open an adequate community pool there, was tremendously in favor of this. People stated they would be very willing to donate money and help to fundraise for this goal.
I find it strange that our community doesn’t have adequate community pool facilities for our local residents. Look at Scarsdale by comparison. I understand they have a beautiful pool complex for their residents.
If we had a nice community pool it could only add value to our community. It would be another attractive feature about living here.
And for those who would still prefer to swim in a cold, indoor pool during the summer or year round, they could still buy their memberships to the Hommocks!
I have a family membership at the Hommocks Pool and my kids do classes and swim team there. We don’t particularly mind the cool temps (we are primarily “lap swimmers”) but have brought guests with us who paid a large price to enter the pool with us as a family and couldn’t swim because they were too cold. Though I don’t personally need it, I am not opposed to having the water a little warmer.
I do, however, agree wholeheartedly with WeNeedABetterCommunityPool in that entry to the pool is ridiculous for families and cumbersome for all, the food is beyond disgusting, even poisonous, the locker rooms are pitiful and the guard staff at the pool are often unprofessional, unfriendly and sometimes even rude.
If they were going to replace the roof in a way that blocked out the sun, they would have been smarter to put solar panels to generate energy to heat the pool that way.
For the money, Hommocks is an economically sound way to keep my family active but I would love to have another option. Too bad our beloved waters have been so polluted.
Hommocks is not a very good facility; we can all agree on that. Yes, would have been great to take over Hampshire, but money talks. Much of the chatter I heard at the time was that the town should use its zoning power to get a good “deal” from the Hampshire members. It’s all good as long as other people pay (in this case Hampshire members by accepting a lower price under duress from the town). All those people who said they’d donate or fundraise … please. I am sure that if they showed up to the town check in hand, the town would have listened. As things stood, it would have been financial suicide for the town to buy the Hampshire property in this economic environment.
As for the current problem at hand, a small (yes, in the scheme of things, small) number of folks, mostly with small children, want the temperature raised. To make small children comfortable in a pool, the temperature woluld have to approach that of the outdoor pool. So here’s an idea: move the swim lessons to the outdoor pool for the summer. If we are talking about “small” children, the outdoor pool is plenty big enough. Everyone else should be just fine in the big pool. Where have all the environmentalists and fiscal conservatives gone when their creature comforts are at stake?
No way can you have lessons in the outdoor pool!!! I’m 5’2″, and the deepest part of the outdoor pool is up to my waist. Unless I side-step a couple of feet, where it begins to get even more shallow. (My son took swim lessons for two years at Hommocks, ages 4-6. He had a neoprene wetsuit and he still shivered and had blue lips after each lesson in the redone pool.) I like the solar panels heating the water idea…that sounds like something that still can be done. At least if the water temperature is tolerable, missing the sun wouldn’t be quite as miserable as it is now.
In my view, raising the temperature of the big indoor pool will do practically nothing to ameliorate the Hommocks Pool as a whole. The freezing temperature is just one issue among many. The bottom line is that it is still an indoor pool. The community ought to have a nice, big, outdoor pool in a reasonably attractive environment. The horrendous food, lack of chairs, indoor aspect, etc. at Hommocks makes for fodder for the country clubs. I strongly dislike the entrance practices at most of the area’s country clubs, where one must go through rounds of interviews, etc. and then wait to hear back to see if they are willing to accept you. The only area club that I know of that definitely doesn’t have this practice is Mamaroneck Beach and Yacht, where you can just pay and join if you would like to. I would really like to know if there are other area clubs that have a more equitable entrance, meaning if you would like to join you are in? (I am specifically thinking of pool, possibly beach, but not golf.) Does anyone know?
If it weren’t for Manor Beach I would not enjoy our community much during the summertime.
I also feel that Hommocks will become less appealing to my children as they get older. I am thinking that as they get older it will become more obvious to them what a complete dump it is, and they won’t want to go there any longer.
I grew up in Larchmont and learned to swim at Hommocks 35+ years ago. My folks still live in town and go to Hommocks. They stopped going to Manor Beach a long time ago. After skimming some of the comments above I realized that paying for the expensive membership to a an outdoor pool/tennis club in the town I’ve lived in for the past four years might actually be worth it. We lived in Eastchester for a few years and what L/M folks are saying about the Town buying a club is what was done at Lake Isle, except it was done after, I believe, a civil rights case was brought against Lake Islee when it was private. Bottom line is it is more enjoyable to swim in an outdoor pool during the summer. Of course, if you don’t belong to a health club or a Y with an indoor pool, you can’t swim for the rest of the year. Gotta believe that Mamaroneck can heat the sucker a bit to resolve part of the dilemma.
I have to agree with those that say it is not the time to spend money. Soon we will all be strapped for cash. When all the debt starts coming due, and believe me it already is, we as a town, county, state and country will be in dire straights. The bottom line – it will come out of our (taxpayers) pocket. To consider spending Town of Mamaroneck funds on this sort of thing now is just plain stupid. If the food is horrible, attend a town board meeting and voice your opinions. Perhaps the town will search out a new vendor. Perhaps some trees can be trimmed allowing more light to filter in. Let us try something fiscally responsible that might help ease the obvious distress this issue is having on some of our residents.
Weneedabetterpool is absolutely correct. Thank you!! Hommocks pool is the pits. My family loves to swim but we don’t because the kids don’t like the Hommocks pool at all now that they’re old enough to realize how bad the facilities are. When they were under 10 it was ok but now as pre-teens they realize that it’s more fun to not go there than to go there. No outdoor pool and no nice places to hang out are the main issues. Thank goodness for Manor Beach but it’s still no substitute for a community pool. Here’s how bad it is: my neighbors here in the village put up little above-ground pool on a dirt patch in their yard and the kids insist that the neighbors are having more fun in this dinky 4 foot deep circle than they could have at HMX pool. HMX pool is decidedly NOT a summer facility. It’s adequate for a winter facility to swim laps, and for middle school gym class and for swim team but that’s where it ends. Most towns have an indoor pool for those reasons I just mentioned, and they also have an outdoor community pool for summer. Yes, we do need a better pool. The glass roof did nothing but try to trick us into thinking we were getting an all-season pool and in the end what it did was provide a nice place for the pigeons to hang out and watch the people try to have fun in the pool. You can see the pigeons looking down from their perches on the ceiling beams, practically rolling their eyes and saying “suckers!”.
p.s. pigeons hanging out on the beams over the pool = health hazard. Yuk! Someone please correct me if anti-pigeon measures have been taken since I was last there but last year the birds were abundant on the exposed beams over the pool.
Lorelei, I’m glad to hear you agree. My 8 year old is already aware of the yucky facilities and as a result is not crazy about Hommocks. At least we still like Manor Beach. My question is what can we do to facilitate getting a better community pool for Larchmont/Mamaroneck? Does anyone know? If there were some concrete steps that would actually move us toward this goal, surely others would lend support and pitch in. Maybe the Loop might be willing to look into this issue, whether there is history on people agitating for a better community pool, and perhaps help move things in the right direction?