If you have had a swimming pool for some time or if you are about to get one – either an above-ground or an in-ground swimming pool – you must check to see whether your district requires you to take any safety precautions. For example, some states in America call for the erection of a swimming pool safety fence by law, others are about to introduce such a law and others are thinking of calling for a pool alarm too.
However, it is not all one-sided. There are also benefits to the owner of the pool of installing a pool safety fence. The foremost benefit of such a fence is safety. If you have young children or grand-children, you do not always have the time to supervise them playing in the pool, so a fence is a way of allowing the kids to play in the garden while excluding them from the dangerous pool.
Kids can be scallywags, all adults know that even if some parents think that their own kids are not, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone else thinks they are. Our children know that they have to behave in front of us, but what occurs whilst they know that we are not watching? You know, you were a kid yourself once. I climbed the fence into the municipal outdoor pool more than once while I was a teenager and mostly after a few beers.
The fact is that if you have an unprotected pool, there is a good chance that the local kids will use it when you are away and these days that means negligence on behalf of the pool owner. Whether that is right or wrong, it is like that and if someone should drown in your pool, you would be in big trouble, unless you could prove that your took reasonable measures to prevent unauthorized access to your pool.
A security pool fence is just about the cheapest way of doing that, although fences can be easily scaled as I full-well know. However, having a fence shows that you have considered the problem and that you have tried to deter intruders.
There are quite a number of acceptable styles of pool fencing but it may vary from district to district, so it is first worth checking whether there are any local minimum standards in force in your region. Other than that, there are choices of wire, timber and steel. Wire can include mesh fences as well.
Timber almost certainly looks the best and gives the most options. If you want total privacy, you can have a full fence or if you would like to be able to see out, you could go for hit-and-miss vertical boarding. I do not like mesh, personally. I have painted tens of miles of fencing in my time and there always seems to be litter caught in the mesh. Iron railings are nice as well, but pretty costly.
Whichever sort of fence you go for, grow a continuous wall of the prickliest, thorniest bushes you can find around the base of it. Pyracanthas are ideal and the berries attract birds – wild birds, that is. Let them grow to three or four feet high and they will deter drunks and give the ladies some privacy while lying around the pool.
Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on various subjects, but is now concerned with speedo swimming costumes. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Swimwear for Big Busts.
