How to control access to the community pool

28 June 2024

The community pool and its access problems

Nowadays, many homeowners' associations have a communal pool, allowing residents, especially in the summer, to escape the heat and enjoy the outdoors with their families. As long as the pool is used in a friendly manner, everyone is happy to enjoy this service, which is shared by all the residents.

However, not all communities find themselves in this idyllic situation. Some have problems controlling who accesses the pool: neighbors, family, friends, guests, and people from outside the community can often use the community pool service, and if this situation gets out of hand, the problems begin to affect the community's living arrangements. In this case, controlling access to the community pool is often the most commonly used solution. These are initially attempted through changes to the pool regulations to limit or control these situations. If the results are ultimately unsuccessful, implementing access control systems is the next step.

Among the access systems that can be used in swimming pools, we have seen several that we summarize below:

The use of the pool is limited to certain times or certain days of the week, sometimes even dividing residents by shifts or buildings or any other system that allows demand to be reduced and redirected.
The lifeguard himself performs access control duties. This situation has two direct implications: either the lifeguard's work is not performed properly, or the cost of the solution is too high a recurring amount for the Community to bear.
A system of invitations, usually numbered, is created and distributed to residents before the start of the pool season. This solution does not, in itself, provide access control, as it also requires control to verify these invitations, either through human or technical means.
Membership cards are used, which are updated and distributed to residents before the start of the season. Again, this solution isn't access control, as it also requires verifying these cards by some means.

Through our experience, we've learned that all of these systems described are never a definitive solution, but rather a temporary fix that, depending on the residents' behavior, offers more or less comprehensive solutions to the problem. Therefore, we have once again turned to technology to offer more automated and lower-cost solutions that allow for adequate control of pool access.

Access to the pool using an app

And our solution to these problems, naturally, involves the use of an app by residents. The Onzane app already adds some additional features that allow residents to control access to the community pool. If we already use it to improve communication within the community, why not use it to control pool access as well? Keep in mind that our app, by default, already offers the following to a community:

Define the community's properties, including the people who live in each home, whether they are owners, cohabitants, or tenants.
Be able to define, for each property, whether or not the pool can be used as a community amenity. It should be noted that in many communities today, pool use is not permitted to residents who owe the community.
Being able to define finer-grained permissions for neighbors that allow, or deny, access and control to certain community spaces.

By leveraging these basic features that our app offers to communities, and adding certain aspects more suited to the use of swimming pools, we have managed to offer an integrated solution, making the app a system for defining permissions and also an access control system.

To achieve this, we have included these additional features, especially suitable for community pools:

Create digital keys for residents, allowing them to open and/or close doors, turnstiles, and other access systems. These digital keys can be used by residents from the app to activate physical access systems at the doors via Bluetooth, dynamic QR codes, or remotely via the internet.
You can define facilities that do not require a reservation for use. To achieve this, we have added two types of facilities (Access Control and Lock), which do not require a reservation for use and, in addition to providing access, allow for location control of people in the first type. With these facilities, you can define any access door to the community, whether interior or exterior, and also control the location of people (and vehicles) if desired.

With these features, we can also define any gate or turnstile for accessing the community pool area, including location control, allowing specific people to leave the pool without first entering, and vice versa. Once defined in the Onzane app, digital keys can be created for any community member who is granted permission to use these access points.

These digital keys are displayed in the neighbors' app, and each one allows a specific action on a device: Enter, Exit, Open, Close, Turn On, or Turn Off. For example, for a pool, we can create digital keys for a neighbor that allow them to enter and exit the pool, controlling their location at any given time, and thus preventing a neighbor from having unlimited access through the app.

Rules can also be applied to the use of these keys. Currently, our app allows you to define their validity period (starting from a date, between dates, or until a date) so that you can automate their use only during pool season, for example.

Below is a video showing how a resident accesses the community pool through an automatic turnstile. To do this, the resident has been given two digital keys that allow them to enter and exit the pool. In this case, these keys generate a dynamic QR code in the app, which must be displayed on the turnstile's QR reader to activate it:

Other means of accessing the pool without an app

Listen, using the app to control pool access is great, but you have to keep in mind that in a community, there are other people who also want to use the pool but can't use the app. For example, there are older people who don't dare use a mobile app, or young children, or people who simply 't have a mobile phone.

For these cases, we can also use the Onzane app. With it, we can create physical keys, which we then distribute to these individuals and which integrate with the permissions defined in Onzane.

For older adults or those without a mobile phone to use the app, at Onzane we often use physical proximity access devices, typically key fobs or cards with RFID or NFC technology. These devices are also displayed at the pool entrance turnstile and allow contactless identification and activation of the automatic turnstile.

For the even more specific case of young children, we use silicone wristbands that also use RFID or NFC technology to identify them and also allow them to access the turnstile and swim in the pool without damaging the wristband. These wristbands are also pre-coded through Onzane to define their access permissions.

Mixed models for access control to swimming pools

In addition to the use of the Onzane app to control pool access, we may encounter mixed models in certain communities. For example, there are communities where, in addition to residents, anyone outside the community can use the pool service, usually paying a daily fee. We have also encountered use cases where the number of daily accesses for residents is limited and/or a limited number of invitations are generated per home for use during the pool season.

For these cases, at Onzane, we can customize the app for convenient use, even integrating the app's payment system to pay for pool services if required. These are very specific models that we don't generally cover, but we can implement them in our app for those communities that require them.

Electronic access devices

Obviously, for a good pool access control system to work in our community, in addition to the Onzane app, a series of electronic and mechanical systems are required that allow us to, for example, turn the turnstile or open a door. These electronic devices also integrate with the Onzane app and allow us to act on them when we make requests from the app or using physical keys.

Therefore, when a community wants to control access to the pool, they should keep in mind that they can do so with our app, but they will need to install electronic access devices on the pool doors, or if they don't have any, install access devices (doors, turnstiles, gates, latches, locks, etc.) that can communicate appropriately with Onzane and perform the requested actions at any time.

At Onzane, we currently integrate with electronic systems from two manufacturers and can offer communities a complete pool access control project that includes the use of our app, as well as the installation and maintenance of these electronic access devices.