What the law requires of your pool, and what it does not
Eleven questions for a residents’ committee, a hotel or a club. Answer no to any of them and you are non-compliant today. It also says when your type of pool is required to have a lifeguard, which is almost never what people assume.
Ley 1209 compliance
- 01
Is there a barrier with access control, kept closed when the pool is not in service?
Ley 1209 de 2008, art. 5
- 02
Is there an immersion alarm working during non-service hours?
Ley 1209 de 2008, art. 11
- 03
Does every drain have its anti-entrapment cover, complete and uncracked?
Ley 1209 de 2008, art. 11
- 04
Is there a vacuum release system, and has anyone ever tested it? Answer yes only if both are true.
Ley 1209 de 2008, art. 11
- 05
Is the manual pump stop outside the plant room, visible and signposted?
Ley 1209 de 2008, art. 11
- 06
Is there a written safety plan and a written set of pool rules? Answer yes only if both are true.
Ley 1209 de 2008, arts. 12 and 13
- 07
Do the rules prohibit entering with chains, necklaces and loose clothing?
Ley 1209 de 2008, art. 13
- 08
Is the logbook up to date, with the daily readings, the running hours and the make-up water? Answer yes only if all of it is true.
Resolución 929 de 2026
- 09
Are the month’s laboratory results posted on the notice board?
Resolución 234 de 2026
- 10
Is there a certified lifeguard in the cases your type of pool requires one?
Ley 1209 de 2008, art. 14
- 11
Has anyone worked out the IRAPI for each pool, and is the result between 0 and 10? Answer yes only if both are true.
Resolución 234 de 2026, technical annex II
Answer the questions to see the result
0 of 11 answered yes.
When your type of pool requires a lifeguard
- Weekends.
- School holiday periods.
- Social events in or around the pool involving children under fourteen.
- Whenever more than ten children are in at once, whatever the day.
Outside those four cases, a residential development needs no lifeguard. What is permanent, with no exception for the day or the season, is the barrier and the immersion alarm during non-service hours. Plenty of developments pay for a lifeguard Monday to Friday and have no alarm: they overspend on what the law does not ask for and fail on what it does.
What can happen, and it is not one single thing
Ley 1209, art. 16
Municipal and police authority
A fine of 50 to 1,000 minimum wages and closure for up to 5 days for a first breach. A second within 6 months: 100 to 1,500 and closure for 5 to 15 days. A third: permanent closure.
Ley 9 de 1979, art. 577
Health authority
Successive fines of up to 10,000 monthly minimum wages, temporary or permanent closure, and safety measures enforceable immediately.
Ley 1801 de 2016, art. 38
Police inspector
Temporary suspension of the activity, on the spot. A repeat within a year: permanent suspension.
The most dangerous route in practice is the third: anyone can call the police because children are using a pool that does not comply, and the inspector can suspend the activity on the spot, with no prior proceedings. It is not the fine that arrives first: it is the closure.
Where it comes from
The act
Ley 1209 de 2008. From it come the mandatory safety devices of article 11, the barrier of article 5, the safety plan and pool rules of articles 12 and 13, and the lifeguard regime of article 14 with its first paragraph.
The technical regulation
Resolución 929 of 12 May 2026, which superseded Resolución 1510 de 2011. Superseded and never repealed: the 1510 lost its footing because Decreto 554 de 2015 repealed Decreto 2171 de 2009, which it hung from. Writing «repealed» would assert something the law did not do.
Water quality
Resolución 234 of 10 February 2026, which takes over the ground of Resolución 1618 de 2010 and creates the IRAPI. The index is worked out separately, in the tool made for it.
Two things that are often misquoted
The act sets no dimension for the barrier: no height, no gap between bars. Article 5 is purely functional. And a residential development does not need a permanent lifeguard: the first paragraph of article 14 confines the duty to four situations.
What this tool does not claim
A tool that answers what its source does not say is worse than no tool at all. This is what is deliberately left unanswered here, and why.
- It does not say whether your pool complies. It says whether what you answered complies, which is different. A real check is done on site, with the drawings of the pool in front of you.
- «Homologado» (type-approved) does not mean today what it looks like it means. The technical regulation that was to define how safety devices must perform was never issued: clause 7 of Resolución 929 still makes it conditional on «the standard the Ministry issues for the purpose» and falls back on the supplier’s own declaration of conformity. Eighteen years after the act, it is still in the future.
- Amounts are given in minimum wages and not in pesos, deliberately. The value of the 2026 minimum wage ended up in litigation and this site does not publish a figure that is under dispute.
- Article 16 says «current statutory minimum wages» without specifying monthly or daily. The difference between the two readings is thirtyfold, and no rule or case law was found that settles it.
- It does not estimate the cost of putting things right. That varies by more than an order of magnitude on a single fact (whether the pool shell has to be opened), and any figure given before surveying your pool is advertising, not a budget.
It is cracking. It leaks. Something is wrong.
A technical inspection to establish what is happening and why, before spending on repairs that do not address the cause. You get the diagnosis in writing, with the remedies and the order to do them in.