Pool Fencing

Of course, supervision is your first line of defense against tragic pool drownings, but sometimes your eyes and ears fail you. Even worse, there are usually no sensory clues that a child is drowning in a pool. Drownings happen quickly and quietly. Most children who drown are being supervised by an adult at the time of the occurrence. Over 75% of all drowning victims had been in the pool less than five minutes when they were discovered submerged; there was rarely any splashing or screaming to signal the drowning. Nearly half of all child victims were last seen in the house before a pool accident, nearly 25% on the porch by the pool.

To prevent such tragic accidents, if you own a residential pool, you should have a multi-layered defense system, on top of careful supervision. You should always, always, install pool fencing that meets your local safety standards and the BOCA National Building Code. The fencing should have self closing gates with latches high out of the reach of children. Ideally, doors leading to the pool area will have an alarm so that you know when the fence has been breached. As soon as they are able to walk or crawl to the pool get your child enrolled in a water safety survival class – they enroll children as young as one year of age (which is important because most child drownings occur with children who are between the ages of one and three). Get yourself and all frequent caregivers CPR training.

When installing pool fencing, be sure to comply with your local safety codes and try to comply with national safety codes as well. There are two national bodies that promulgate safety guidelines for pool fencing: The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC); and the Building Officials and Coda Administrators (BOCA) National Building Code.

The CPSC recommends installing pool fencing around the entire perimeter of the pool. The fence should be at least four feet high and should have no hand or footholds to help a child climb it. Vertical fence slats should be less than four inches apart to keep a child from slipping through, and the bottom of the fence should be less than four inches above the ground to keep a child from slipping under. The gate should open out from the pool and be self-closing and self-locking. Around the lock, there should be no opening greater than ¼” to prevent children from slipping there hands in and unlocking the gate. If the pool fencing you use is chain link, no opening should be greater than 1 ¾” in diameter; if it is mesh the mesh size should be no larger than 1 ¼”. BOCA requirements are almost exactly the same.

Child drowning is a sad, common, but unnecessary occurrence. To keep your little loved ones from harm in the pool, always keep a watchful eye and install pool fencing that keeps them from going under, over, and through the fence into the pool.