One of the most important safety features that you will install along with a new pool is the fence that will keep the children and pets away from harm or worse. There are many homes that have swimming pools where there is only a property fence that surrounds the yard and not the pool itself and all the experts agree that this is not a proper situation where home safety is concerned. It’s important to remember that a property fence will restrict neighborhood children from gaining access to the pool from outside the yard, but this fence does nothing to restrict children who are already inside the home.
This isn’t to say that parents and other caregivers are negligent in their duties, but as anyone who has ever looked after young children knows, they have the ability to disappear from view quickly and often without warning. While there are some other precautions that the responsible adult can take like making sure that there are no doors that lead directly to the pool area, the best thing that adults can do is install or contract out for the installation of a proper fence around the pool area itself. Remember that most of the children who drown in pools do so when they are playing near the pool and not necessarily while swimming in it.
The experts all agree that there is really only one way to significantly reduce the incidents of childhood drowning and that’s to install a four sided pool fence on the inside of the property line and around the pool itself. For children under the age of five, this will prevent seven out of ten drowning tragedies.
There are three ways that young children gain access to a pool through a fence and that’s generally by crawling under, going over or climbing through. Any fence that you decide on should take these options away. The idea behind the pool fence is to separate your pool — from your home as well as your neighbor. In short, the idea behind the design is to isolate the pool and only allow access from an adult perspective.
To prevent children from gaining access, the fence should be four feet high all the way around. This is above the height that the average one to four year old will be able to scale and the gap under the fence should not be more than 2 inches all the way around as well. This applies to chain link fencing as well. If you decide that you want to use a chain link fence, the links need to be spaced so that a small child can’t work their way through them. Usually, this desired spacing is not more that 1.5 inches.
It’s important to remember to lock the gate whenever an adult who can supervise is not near the pool too. This will prevent any enterprising toddler from trying to open the latch when there’s no one around.
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