ou might think anyone who runs a pool business, raises a family and home-schools four kids would barely have time to think, let alone help spark a revolution. But, then, you haven’t met Maria Slaby. Between business, family and teaching her children, Slaby also found time to convince a notoriously obstinate industry to change the way it’s done things for the past 50 years.
“I’m a busy girl,” admits the 37-year-old with a boisterous laugh. “We don’t get very much laundry done around here. Thank God, socks are optional here in Florida.”
Slaby and her husband, Mark, own Mermaid Pools in Mt. Dora, Fla., and have been in the pool-building business for a scant two years. In that short period, they’ve had a significant impact on the way pools can now be built in Florida, implementing a design method that many feel will become the standard for future construction around the country: pools without main drains.
Slaby was the primary driving force behind the movement to convince the Florida Building Commission to amend its building code to allow for main drain-less pools. It was something she found so logical, she couldn’t believe it wasn’t already the standard.
“The codes said [for safety purposes] you had to have two main drains and all these backup systems, and it all seemed so convoluted,” she says. “[No main drain] sounded like so much common sense. You don’t have to worry about any [anti-suction entrapment] system failures.”
Local building inspectors told Slaby that while her idea of building pools without main drains made sense to them, the law did not allow it. If she wanted to do it, she would have to get the code changed.
The gauntlet had been thrown down, and Slaby took on the challenge.
The ‘write’ background
Slaby never envisioned herself as a pool builder, much less a lobbyist. Originally from Minnesota (not exactly the pool capital of the world), she graduated from the University of Wisconsin/ Eau Claire with a degree in journalism.
Yearning to strike out on her own, Slaby started her own graphic design firm, and eventually teamed up with her mother to produce a line of nationally marketed greeting cards.
As Slaby and her husband began having children and the home-schooling lessons began, Slaby’s business was placed on the back burner.
Instead, following their creative urges, the Slabys designed and built their own home in central Florida. They realized that this type of work suited them and purchased several upscale properties and refurbished them.
“We are do-it-yourself type of people,” Slaby says. “In the process of building our own house, we had trouble getting good contractors and good service. That was always in the back of my mind.”
So, when she decided she wanted their new home to have a pool, she thought she and her husband should tackle the building project together.
“I did all the research and decided I wanted fiberglass,” Slaby says. The pool was eventually built and, along with it, an idea. “I had this thought that if we could do this ourselves, then how hard could it be to sell these things?” she recalls.
Her marketing/promotional background, paired with her husband’s business acumen, now could be used to drive the success of their pool business.
Thus, Mermaid Pools of Central Florida Inc. was born. “I’m the mermaid,” Slaby says with a laugh. “I was a competitive swimmer in high school and I’ve always loved the water. And my whole life, I had always wanted a pool.”
It wasn’t until Mermaid Pools began to actually install fiberglass pools that Slaby became acutely aware of the main drain debate — especially when it came to the issue of suction entrapment.
“As a consumer, I was aware of suction entrapment, and it concerned me,” Slaby says.
When she learned from the fiberglass-pool manufacturer that main drains aren’t necessary in the vessels, she knew there was going to be a problem. For starters, putting in main drains compromises the integrity of her fiberglass pools — and creates the suction-entrapment hazard.
Nonetheless, Florida law required that a pool have two main drains.
“I couldn’t watch this continue when I knew there was a simple solution,” she says.
It was time to take on city hall.
Tale of the red tape
The first thing Slaby had to do, according to FBC procedure, was submit a declaratory statement or “dec statement” to the Plumbing Technical Advisory Committee of the FBC.
“We went through the channels of writing the dec statement, and it was so much red tape,” Slaby notes. “The process is not user-friendly. There are defined ways of writing these things. It’s got to point to a specific installation.”
Consequently, Slaby’s first dec statement was submitted in the wrong form and she had to head back to the proverbial drawing board. “I had to beef it up a bit,” she says. “You really have to go through a lot of nonsense.”
Finally, the Technical Advisory Committee accepted her statement and it was put up for discussion in an open forum in March 2002.
“I had no idea what to expect because I’d never been through it before,” Slaby says.
What happened was an explosive debate that dragged on for hours. “I thought, ‘Wow, what a deal,’” Slaby says with a sigh. “We were scheduled for 20 minutes and it became very heated and went on for 4-1/2 hours. Here I am, a brand-new person [to the industry], sitting with all these pool people. Not to mention the fact that I’m a woman.”
The debate was eventually tabled to a TAC meeting in St. Petersburg two months later. “[That meeting] was much more mellow, but still a little dicey,” Slaby says. However, the Plumbing TAC eventually accepted the statement for possible inclusion in the building code.
In July, the FBC finally adopted the change, which essentially gave Florida pool builders the option of building pools without main drains. They are, of course, still welcome to employ the dual main drain with backups method if they wish.
The ensuing months saw Slaby attending more FBC meetings, helping to craft the specific language for the code. “I wanted to make sure it went in smoothly and wanted to help with the verbiage,” she says.
The road ahead
The pool industry is notoriously slow to change, so will Florida’s approval of swimming pools without main drains revolutionize it?
“Revolutionize? Yeah!” Slaby cries triumphantly. “I hope so. I’m just surprised there aren’t more people doing it. That fascinates me.”
When she first proposed the idea, she says she felt some animosity directed toward her. But now she believes attitudes are slowly changing.
“It was interesting at the first meeting, when you could feel the shift in the room as the other contractors started coming around,” she says. “They were looking at [fiberglass installers] and asking, ‘Why don’t they have to put in a main drain and we do?’ ”
Slaby is quick to point out that building a pool without a drain is not just for fiberglass pools. “In retrospect, I should have written the dec statement without the words ‘fiberglass pool,’ ” she says.
Now she is beginning to make converts among gunite pool builders.
“As I sat in that first [TAC] meeting, I was simply stunned,” says Dan Johnson, who is president/owner of Swim Inc., a gunite pool-building firm in Sarasota, and president-elect of NSPI-Florida. “The more I thought about how easy and logical the solution was, the more excited I became.”
Johnson has been building his gunite pools without main drains ever since. “I use dual skimmers and a number of return fittings,” he says. “I used slotted fittings with eyeballs in a fashion that allows it to function even better. The pools are staying cleaner.”
He believes his pools will be safer now, as well. “The obvious benefit is that you can’t get stuck if there is nothing to get stuck on,” he points out.
That makes Slaby feel good, but she says it is just a throwback to her business ethics. “It’s safer, so that means it’s better for our customers,” she says, “and that just goes back to our quality service credo.”
This experience is only the beginning of Slaby’s industry involvement. A new NSPI member, she plans to stay active as a legislative watchdog. She says it’s important to keep an eye on the branches of government that legislate this industry.
“I haven’t been to a meeting since [the no-main-drain code passed], but it’s important to pay attention to the types of codes that are being written,” she says. “So I plan to go again.”
