Summer Safety Tips: Avoiding Home Swimming Pool Injuries
Secure your home pool when it is not in use, to avoid pool injuries.
Preventing Swimming Pool Hazards
One easy way to prevent swimming pool injuries in your home is to properly secure your pool when it is not in use. This protects everyone in your neighborhood, including children and pets who live in your home, from risk. A significant number of injuries and drownings at home swimming pools happen when adults are not using the swimming pool. Using a safety barrier to protect against accidental access to the swimming pool can significantly reduce the likelihood that swimming pool injuries occur at your home pool. Professional guidelines, outlined in Remax’s Swimming Safety Guidelinessuggest that such a safety barrier should:
- Be at least four feet tall
- Have a gap four inches or less at the bottom
- Use materials that children cannot easily climb
- Feature bars or other materials that prevent children from climbing through it
- Latch at least 54” above the ground, to hinder small children from reaching it
- Have gates that open away from the pool
- Keep the gap between the gate and the fence less than 0.5”
Additional ways to decrease the likelihood of swimming pool injuries in your home are 1) installing a pool alarm that alerts you when the gate of your pool is opened, 2) installing an alarm that alerts you when there is someone inside of the pool or installing underwater motion alarms, 3) installing a portable or permanent pool fence (ideally with a gate that automatically closes), 4) using a pool cover approved by the American Society for Testing and Materials so it is proven to support an adult’s weight, 5) using a pool net (as an alternative to a pool cover for those who cannot afford one).