Talk:Swimming and bathing

What about public bath houses?

There are some places in the world where it is a common for people to go into public bath houses. For example there are some villages where people don't have water sanitation installed and they go to public baths. Other example are places famous with theirs mineral springs. There are some public mineral baths as well. Ivanatora 11:47, 23 October 2011 (BST)

Change from "animal" to "pets"

It all looks pretty good to me, and I appreciate in particular the proposal to use the tag sport=swimming only when the pool provides actual lanes for lap swimming. The only change I'd suggest is to switch from "animal" to "pets", as the latter term is a bit more specific. -- Manu3d 21:54, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Please, feel free to edit. This is not really a proposal, it is a kind of collection of different sites, I hope to find out some kind of general tags to use. All help is most welcome. /Johan Jönsson 20:45, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Water were bathing/swimming is forbidden

In Norway most lakes and ponds are free to bath/swim in, but some are sources for drinking water and are not allowed to use for bathing. How should this be tagged? Should probably be similar to the access scheme?

Interesting; This must be a good thing to map, it is better to map the few places you can´t take a bath, instead of all the rest.

I do not know how to tag bathing/swimming forbidden, this is the case in dams to, due to the dangerous currents. Probably something with access=*, even though the boundary=protected_area should be used too. /Johan Jönsson 21:39, 11 July 2011 (BST)

According to Taginfo, both swimming=no (171x) and bathing=no (45x) are in use. --SelfishSeahorse (talk) 14:31, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Sauna/Turkish Bath

There are about 9 places worldwide tagged leisure=turkish_bath. This seems useless as a tag and just causes confusion. For one thing, as already noted, a public_bath is often an amenity, not a leisure activity, in places where there is limited private plumbing. For another, a "Turkish" bath is basically the same (as noted here and in Wikipedia) as a "Roman" bath, a banya, etc.

I could see useful subtags for amenity=public_bath as:

+ bath:steam=yes/no
+ massage=yes/no

...in addition to those already proposed under public_bath:

+ bath:type=onsen/hot_spring/foot_bath
+ bath:sand_bath=yes/no
+ bath:open_air=yes/no

...and those proposed here:

+ name=*
+ fee=*
+ access=yes/private
+ toilet=yes/no
+ shower=yes/no
+ amenity=cafe
+ amenity=kiosk
+ supervised=yes/no (life guard)
+ sport=swimming
+ pets=yes/no

The leisure=sauna tag could remain for dry or steam saunas used as a leisure activity rather than as a public amenity. I note that this tag is 10 times more common than amenity=public_bath. (Though that doesn't make public_bath wrong.)

Johnparis (talk) 10:56, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

I also think that it would make most sense to use amenity=public_bath for all bath types and extend bath:type to bath:type=hammam for Turkish baths, bath:type=thermal for thermal baths etc. --SelfishSeahorse (talk) 08:34, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Water Slides

How to tag individual water slides? I have an event ground that have some water slides from a tower into two different pools. --Skippern (talk) 20:32, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

You can use attraction=water_slide. However, it is not rendered on the standard layer at the moment. --SelfishSeahorse (talk) 08:23, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Recreation ground

There is a lack of description on the page for simple facilities with a pool, changing rooms, some lawns for sunbathing and some volleyball pitches; that do not qualify as water_park since there are not all the huge slides, waves and currents. In German, Freibad English: Lido

I'd see landuse=recreation_ground suitable here, maybe with an appropriate sub-tag (not sport=swimming that should be reserved for the pool itself).--Polarbear w (talk) 19:57, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I've recently asked on the tagging mailing list if we need a new tag for outdoor and indoor swimming pool facilities. The reaction, however, was that leisure=sports_centre + sport=swimming should be used in both cases. --SelfishSeahorse (talk) 21:52, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Just browsed the archive, but I find that your proposal of leisure=swimming_facility was still left open. leisure=sports_centre is suitable for the sport-oriented ones, not for the recreational ones where you hang around on the grass in the sun.--Polarbear w (talk) 22:55, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

sports_centre fore swimming:

• 
• 

Lido/Freibad, recreational:

• 
• 
• 

I didn't pursue leisure=swimming_facility any further because I thought that the chances that this tag would get adopted widely were too small, as only one person supported it. For facilities where one can't swim but only bath, amenity=public_bath could be used, in addition with bath:type=pool or similar. (However, as most swimming/bathing facilities are neither exclusively sports-oriented nor exclusively bathing-oriented, but both, I would have preferred to have one sole tag for all those facilities.) Regards --SelfishSeahorse (talk) 19:07, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

How to map stairs or ladders allowing to enter a lake, river etc?

In the lake https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=21/47.6953295/12.4260061 swimming is allowed, but there's only one convenient "entrance" - hence, it's not that easy to find so it's nice to see it on the map. As it's a ladder, I mapped it using ladder=* which is currently defined for paths in mountainous terrain...but isn't a ladder a ladder? ;-) So do you think this tagging is OK or do you have any tagging idea that is better suited? --Schoschi (talk) 18:55, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

I had the same question and followed your approach here. Please let me know if there is another way on how to map ladder entries like that. And if there is a broader consensus about that, it would be fine to add that info to the Wiki. --Jkirk (talk) 12:57, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Natural baths not verifiable?

{ping PangoSE} - re [1] do not think they are not verifiable just because there is no sign or facilities. The holds for many forest paths. RicoZ (talk) 21:51, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Fluvial/river beach

In some countries (like Portugal) there are hundreds of river beaches (or fluvial beaches, as they are better known). They're not natural beaches, instead, they're leisure areas built or arranged to receive people right next to a river. I've been using leisure=swimming_area to the river area, but what would be the best way to map the area we see here in green? With amenity=public_bath + bath:type=river + bath:open_air=yes? Or something simplier, like leisure=river_beach? --AntMadeira (talk) 23:53, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

That looks a bit like a leisure=park to me: https://escapadinhas.org/img/Escapadinha_1545_l.jpg - it is an area with grass next to an artifically stabilized riverbank, which slopes down with fitted stones into the river, and there are trees, a path, and some benches or picnic tables. Or perhaps it is a tourism=picnic_site? --Jeisenbe (talk) 05:10, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, they can have similar spaces, with a park or space for picnics, but that's only because they're inland (you can also have picnic spaces in a sea beach). They're called "fluvial beaches", they have life guards and blue flags. They can have sand, grass or paving stones. Here's more examples: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, but you'll find many more searching for "praia fluvial" or "praias fluviais". --AntMadeira (talk) 05:38, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Such baths also exist in Germany, e.g. https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/28237575 which is tagged as leisure=water_park - IMHO not really suitable, because it does not have more or less "fun elements" than the average "Freibad" (German) / "Lido" (English), see also discussion above, while I consider your suggested tagging amenity=public_bath + bath:type=river + bath:open_air=yes as perfectly matching. --Schoschi (talk) 12:53, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, leisure=water_park is definitely not the right tag for that... If no good alternative exists for a inland beach (not natural) with life guards and blue flags, I'll probably start a proposal for it someday, maybe with leisure=river_beach. It seems a good one for these kind of features. --AntMadeira (talk) 14:28, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

See leisure=bathing_place Something B (talk) 21:25, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

I had seen that one, but here's some considerations: 1) It's poorly described. What is a bath? Does that mean you can't swim? If not, it's not a beach. 2) It seems to point that the bath it's not the part of the water. So, what area? Shouldn't it be to the actual area where people bath? 3) As I mentioned above, these fluvial beaches have life guards and blue flags. Does it apply? --AntMadeira (talk) 21:50, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

It is place where you enter in water. Something B (talk) 22:54, 3 March 2021 (UTC)