Your pool gate is not safe enough

Your backyard pool is a great addition to your home. Whether underground or above ground, the pool offers you and your children a lot of fun and recreation. It’s also a great social gathering place, ideal for inviting friends, family and neighbors to cook and relieving the heat of summer. However, pools can be dangerous, especially for young children.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drowning The main cause of death for children under 5 years of age And most of those drowning happens in home pools. Of course, what makes these statistics more unimaginably sad than ever is the preventable nature.

This is why everyone with an unstable combination of young children and home pools needs to install some sort of barrier (usually a fence). Pool fences will definitely help keep your child safe and significantly reduce the risk of drowning, but only if you do it right.

Fence basics

First and foremost, pool fences are not magical guardians. It needs to be properly installed and tuned.

• The pool fence should be at least 4 to 5 feet high to discourage your little monkey-like human from getting over it.
• The fence should completely surround the pool.
• The fence should be placed away from objects and furniture that the child can climb to raise altitude and bend over.
• For fences with vertical slats, make sure the horizontal support pieces are inside and prevent them from becoming the stairs of the ersatz ladder. Slat spacing should not exceed 1/4 inch. This prevents children from putting their feet in the fence so that they can climb it.
• There should be no more than 4 inches of clearance between the bottom of the fence and the ground. Small children are essentially made of clay and can pass through some very narrow spaces.
• If you do not use it for a long time, you need to cover the pool tightly.

Proper installation of the fence is important, but there is another factor that is just as important.

The gate is the key

If you actually use the pool after installing the fence (rather than considering it as a clean art installation), you should include the gate. However, the gate must be firmly latched for the gate to take effect. Leaving the gate open during busy days can quickly make the pool fence useless.

Here are some things to consider when installing a gate for a pool fence:

• Must be self-closing. The hinges of the gate should close automatically so that the gate closes behind, regardless of whether you remember closing the gate. It’s too easy to rush through the pool gate and forget to pull back. The hinge tension should be adjusted to accommodate not only the weight of the gate, but also the resistance of the wind. Run some tests on the hinges each time you open the pool.
• Must be self-latch. If the latches do not engage, the auto-closed gate will not be very useful. Magnetic latches are ideal when used in combination with self-closing hinges. They ensure that the latches engage and young adventurers cannot pass through as long as the hinges close the gate.
• I need an alarm. Find that pool gate latch With alarm.. If the latch is released for a short time (usually around 15 seconds), an alarm will sound to let you know that the gate is open.

If you want to be more secure, you can install a monitoring and alarm system in the pool itself. These systems alert you whenever activity occurs in the pool. It’s usually Bluetooth-enabled and comes with a pair of apps that you can install on your phone so you can be alerted even when you’re not at home. However, if you have a high quality fence to secure the pool and you have an auto-closed auto-latch gate, you don’t need much pool monitoring.

Ultimately, fences aren’t an issue when a child grows up and sneaks out of a house in the middle of the night, but until then, proper gate configuration is essential.