Your Pool Gate Is Not Secure Enough
A backyard pool is a great addition to your home. Whether it’s an above ground or above ground pool, it offers plenty of fun and entertainment for you and the kids. It’s also an awesome place to socialize, perfect for inviting friends, family and neighbors for picnics and a break from the summer heat. But swimming pools can be dangerous, especially for small children. According to the Centers for Disease Control, drowning is the leading cause of death in children under the age of 5, and most of these drownings occur in a home pool. Of course, what makes this statistic even more unimaginably sad than it already is is its preventable nature.
That’s why anyone with a changeable combination of young children and a home pool needs to put up some kind of barrier – usually a fence. A pool fence will definitely help keep your kids safe and greatly reduce the risk of drowning, but only if you do it right.
Fence Basics
First of all, pool fencing is not a magical protector. You must properly install and calibrate it:
- The pool fence should be at least four to five feet high to keep your tiny ape people from climbing over it.
- The fence must completely surround the pool.
- The fence should be located away from any objects or furniture that a child can climb to gain height and climb over it.
- For a fence with vertical slats, make sure all horizontal support members are inside so they can’t become surrogate stair rungs. The distance between the planks should not exceed one and three quarters of an inch, which should ensure that children cannot get in there with their feet so that they can climb over the fence.
- There should be no more than four inches between the bottom of the fence and the ground. Young children are essentially made of clay and can squeeze into very tight spaces.
- The pool must be securely closed whenever you enter an extended period of non-use.
Proper installation of the fence is key, but there is another factor that is equally important.
Gates are key
If you are going to use your pool after installing a fence (instead of treating it as a beautiful art installation), you will need to include a gate. But the point is, gates need to be securely locked to be effective – gates left open during a busy day instantly render your pool fencing useless.
Here’s what to consider when installing a gate to enclose your pool:
- It must be self-closing. Your gate hinges should be self-closing so that the gate closes behind you whether you remember to close it or not. It’s all too easy to throw yourself through the pool gate and forget to close it behind you. The tension of the hinges must be adjusted to support not only the weight of the gate, but also the wind resistance. Check the hinges every time you open the pool.
- It must be self-locking. Self-closing gates are not very useful if the latch does not latch. Magnetic latches are best used in combination with self-closing hinges. They ensure that while the hinges close the gate, the latch snaps shut and your young adventurers can’t get through.
- There must be an alarm. Look for a pool gate latch with an alarm . An alarm sounds if the latch is released within a short period of time – usually 15 seconds or so – alerting you that the gate is open.
If you want to be even more secure, you can install a monitoring and alarm system in the pool itself. These systems alert you whenever there is any activity in the pool and usually come with Bluetooth support and a paired app that you can install on your phone to get alerts even when you’re not at home. But you don’t need a pool monitor so much if you’ve secured your pool with a quality fence and installed self-closing self-locking gates.
Eventually, your kids will grow up and the fence won’t be much of a problem for them when they sneak out of the house to shoot cannons in the middle of the night, but until then, proper gate configuration is vital.