A hotel, condominium or gym pool is not a big pool. It is a pool with obligations of its own — and with a named person answering for them.
Portugal has no single statute governing every pool in public use. The framework depends on the kind of installation: pools in tourist developments follow the parameters of Decreto Regulamentar n.º 5/97, through the referral in article 5(3) of Portaria n.º 358/2009; public sports facilities follow Decreto-Lei n.º 141/2009; aquatic amusement venues follow Decreto-Lei n.º 65/97 and Decreto Regulamentar n.º 5/97 directly; and the rest — condominiums, holiday rentals, care homes — answer to the health authority's sanitary surveillance and to their municipality's own pool regulation. The party answering for the pool is always the operator, never the maintenance company. ManutençãoPiscinas treats the water, takes the samples to an accredited laboratory, hands over the certificates and leaves the written record ready for inspection, across Lisbon and the South Bank.
The question is not whether the owner is a private individual or a company. It is who gets into the water, and in what kind of installation. That is what decides the applicable statute — and it is exactly where most of what circulates online about Portuguese pools goes wrong, applying to everyone a regulation written for water parks.
Portaria n.º 358/2009, article 5(3) → Decreto Regulamentar n.º 5/97
The portaria requires pools in these developments to have equipment ensuring water quality within the parameters set by Decreto Regulamentar n.º 5/97 « or other regulation that may come to govern the matter ». It is the clearest referral in Portuguese law on this subject, and it is where the obligations set out below come from.
Decreto-Lei n.º 141/2009 · DGS Circular Normativa n.º 14/DA
Decreto-Lei n.º 141/2009 sets the legal regime for sports facilities in public use, pools included. Water quality is monitored under the pool sanitary surveillance programme, guided by Circular Normativa n.º 14/DA of the Direção-Geral da Saúde.
Decreto-Lei n.º 65/97 · Decreto Regulamentar n.º 5/97
These venues are what Decreto Regulamentar n.º 5/97 was written for. It applies to them directly, not by referral, and it covers the technical and safety conditions of the whole venue, not only the water.
No specific national statute · health authority · municipal regulation
There is no national statute governing condominium pools specifically. That does not mean there are no obligations: the health authority exercises sanitary surveillance over establishments in public use and can order corrective measures, many municipalities have their own pool regulation, and the condominium rules and the insurance policy add requirements of their own. In practice these pools are judged by the same water parameters — without the same formal framework.
If you need to know exactly what your case requires, the question goes to your município and to the local health authority — and you ask for the answer in writing. This page describes the framework; it does not replace it.
The obligations below are those of Decreto Regulamentar n.º 5/97: they apply to aquatic amusement venues and, through the referral in Portaria n.º 358/2009, to pools in tourist developments. In other installations they serve as the technical reference — these values and this cadence are what the health authority tends to judge the water by, even where the statute does not formally apply.
Article 35
Free chlorine, pH and turbidity shall be determined every four hours, the first determination being mandatorily made before the facilities open to the public each day.
The operator must hold the instruments and reagents needed to carry them out.
Samples for the daily analyses are taken from at least two points in each tank's body of water — not from a single point, and not from one tank standing in for the others.
Article 35(3)
Physico-chemical and bacteriological analyses shall be carried out twice a month, with a minimum of 10 days between them, using official or accredited laboratories.
That is two conditions, not one. Samples on the 3rd and the 8th are two analyses in the month and still fail: they are two days short of the interval.
The operator must also state which products are used to treat the water.
Article 36
This is the part that decides an inspection, and the part most often missing.
Note that last point: having the certificates filed away is not enough. They have to be in sight of whoever walks in.
Articles 33 and 34
The water is filtered, disinfected and holds a residual disinfecting power.
Disinfection products must be expressly authorised by the health authorities, and disinfectant is added by automatic dosing system, without exception. Daily fresh-water replacement is metered by a totalising counter.
From Annex II of Decreto Regulamentar n.º 5/97, Table I — physico-chemical analyses. It is the table you have to open the statute to obtain, which is why it is rarely published.
| Parameter | Recommended value | Limit value |
|---|---|---|
| Temperature | — | 24 °C to 30 °C (heated pools) |
| Turbidity | — | 6 NTU (or Secchi disc) |
| pH | 7.4 to 7.6 | 7 to 8 |
| Free residual chlorine (Cl₂) | — | 0.5 – 1.2 mg/l at pH 7 – 7.4 · 1 – 2 mg/l at pH 7.4 – 8 |
| Total residual chlorine (Cl₂) | — | Free residual chlorine + 0.6 mg/l |
| Conductivity | 900 µS/cm | 1700 µS/cm |
| Oxidisability | — | Not to exceed the supply water value by more than 4 mg/l of O₂ |
| Ammonia | 0.5 mg/l | 1.5 mg/l |
Note what almost every manual flattens: the free chlorine range depends on the pH. A free chlorine of 0.8 mg/l complies at pH 7.2 and fails at pH 7.6. It is one of the reasons the two are always measured together — and why a record carrying only the chlorine proves nothing.
The 24 °C to 30 °C range is the one this table sets for heated pools. It is not the range for hot tubs and jacuzzis, which run above it: there the disinfectant degrades far faster and the bather load per litre is of another order entirely.
Total coliforms, Escherichia coli, faecal enterococci, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, total staphylococci, coagulase-producing staphylococci and micro-organisms viable at 37 °C.
For the faecal indicators and for Pseudomonas aeruginosa the recommended value is absence — 0/100 ml. The limit for each parameter is in the statute's table and on the laboratory certificate.
In pools disinfected without chlorine, Table II sets the residuals for bromine, copper, ozone, silver and isocyanuric acid.
Sanitary surveillance of pools rests with the health authorities, whose powers are set out in Decreto-Lei n.º 82/2009: they monitor the sanitary standard of establishments in public use and order the corrective measures needed to protect public health. Where the water presents a risk, those measures can include closing the tank to use until conditions are restored.
The technical guidance for the programme is Circular Normativa n.º 14/DA of the Direção-Geral da Saúde, dated 21 August 2009.
In tourist developments the inspection powers of ASAE and of Turismo de Portugal apply on top, under Decreto-Lei n.º 39/2008.
Your município may have its own pool regulation, with licensing and operating requirements that add to all of the above. It is the first door to knock on when the question concerns a condominium pool.
We are a maintenance company, not the health authority. And there is one thing no maintenance company can do for the operator: the four-hourly measurements. Those are taken on site, by the establishment's own staff, every day the pool is open. The rest is ours.
Visits at the contracted frequency: parameter control, water correction, checks on filtration, automatic dosing and water replacement, and a written record of everything done.
We take the sample and send it to the accredited laboratory, twice a month and more than 10 days apart, as the statute requires. We receive the certificate, transcribe it into the history and attach the original PDF. This service is contracted separately from maintenance: the cost is the laboratory's and depends on the number of tanks and the parameters requested, so it is not included in the monthly plans.
Every measurement lands in that tank's history, whether it came from our visit, from the laboratory or from your staff's readings. Not three separate records: one series, with the origin of each value identified.
Whoever is responsible for the pool logs in, sees the pH, chlorine and turbidity curves, downloads the certificates and enters the four-hourly readings on their phone, standing at the tank. The system flags when the next reading is overdue.
The water quality report as a PDF, with the period's series and out-of-range values marked, and the A4 display sheet, designed to be read standing a metre away, carrying the values the law requires you to display to users.
The system counts the month's analyses and tells you from which day the next sample meets the 10-day minimum interval. It saves a wasted trip and it saves an incomplete month.
On inspection day the question is always the same: show me the records. The answer takes thirty seconds.
What we do not do is guarantee the installation's compliance. It depends as well on what happens between our visits and on the readings that are your staff's responsibility. We guarantee our part: the treatment, the sampling at the right cadence and the written record ready to show.
Answers to common questions
This page is for information and does not replace legal advice or the determinations of the competent health authority. The statutes cited are amended over time: check the version in force in the Diário da República.
Content reviewed in August 2026.
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