Noise in indoor swimming pools: Insights from a survey and acoustic measurements

Indoor swimming pools are supposed to be a place to exercise, recreate and enjoy free time. However, many indoor swimming pools show a deficit in appropriate acoustics which can have negative effects on employees and guests. For instance, in previous work surveying sports teachers, acoustics was the ambient condition rated as least satisfying and insufficient speech intelligibility was reported which can be fatal when it comes to security aspects. The presented work contributes to this topic by surveying over 140 employees working in indoor swimming pools and combining these results with room acoustic measurements. Results include the identification of most annoying noise sources, overall satisfaction with ambient conditions and noise-induced health effects among others. Selected results from room acoustic measurements (e.g. sound level, reverberation time) in different indoor swimming pools complement the presentation in order to evaluate the current state of acoustics in indoor swimming pools both subjectively and objectively.