AAA Pool Service Blog

Simple Steps to a Safer Pool

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

As residential pool owners, we have the responsibility of patrolling our pools and making sure we abide by the highest safety standards for everyone that uses the pool. This means both utilizing the safest pool equipment and ensuring we are prepared to handle any incident that might occur. According to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 3,443 unintentional drownings in the United States in 2007 alone. The majority of these fatalities happen in residential pools and spas. Fortunately, there are plenty of precautions you can take to help prevent problems like these from occurring.

Here are some basic guidelines to maintaining the safest pool in town:

Having and Maintaining Appropriate Pool Equipment

• Maintain your pool cover to ensure it is in excellent working order. This simple measure can prevent critical accidents and can protect your pool from the natural elements.

• Put up a fence in between your house and the pool. Children's drowning often occurs from them wandering out of the house and falling into the pool.

• Put self-closing and self-locking gates on the entrance to the pool that are higher than a child can reach to ensure they won't be able to open the gate on their own.

• Install pool and gate alarms to alert adults when children have come too close to the pool water.

• Check to make sure your anti-entrapment drain covers are in full working order.

• Install a Safety Vacuum Release System (SVRS) that will automatically shut off the pump if there is a blockage detected. An alarm will sound and not stop until attention is taken.

Practicing Water Safety

• Make sure you and your child know how to swim before entering the pool. If the child does not know how to or is not well-experienced, it is imperative that they wear a life jacket while in or around the pool. "Floaties" are not a substitute for a life jacket.

• At all times, there should be an adult present at the pool that keeps a very watchful eye on every child in or around the pool.

• It is important that at least one adult at the pool knows how to perform CPR on both children and adults.

• Attempt to keep children away from pool drains and pipes to avoid any type of entrapment that may occur.

• Have a pool safety kit nearby that includes a first aid kit, a pair of scissors to cut someone free if necessary, a charged portable phone to call 911 in the case of an emergency, and a flotation device in case you need to aid someone who is drowning.

• When finished using the pool for the day, remove all pool tools from the pool area to reduce the temptation for children to want to play in or around the area without supervision.

At the end of the day, being overly cautious when it comes to pool safety is not a bad thing. Drowning is completely preventable and if the proper steps are taken, it should almost never occur. By owning a residential pool you have a responsibility to protect everyone that uses the pool to the best of your ability. Take this responsibility seriously and get your pool equipment and your safety skills up to par!

This entry was written by Michael Lewis , posted on Tuesday, March 15, 2011 Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post . You can post a comment.

1 comment for “Simple Steps to a Safer Pool”

  1. Camila
    Posted Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 3:33:55 PM

    Please note that the following post pertains to the following automatic safety covers:
    1) the ones that meet or exceed the ASTM Standards of Safety
    2) Have a backup power source in case of power outages
    3) Have a sensor that prevents entrapment
    4) Have a vacuum over the cover to prevent water accumulation
    5) Can support the weight of several adults or even tractors without any problems.

    My husband and I live in Northport Village in Long Island, NY, and we are in the process of putting in an all-weather, in-ground SPA. The Village Pool Code applies for SPAs as well, and it states that we must have an enclosure around the spa and equipment only in addition to our already existing 6' perimeter fence with a self-latching gate. Safety of our children and two small dogs, as well as the safety of our friends' children and neighborhood children were our primary concern, and while doing our research we found that today's automatic safety covers that meet the ASTM standards (also called HORRIZONTAL FENCES) provide an unmatched 100% safety record as opposed to the pool enclosures which only provide a 19-80% safety record in preventing drowning. Additionally, as a child, I witnessed the death by drowning of another child at the home of my parents' friends, in a pool that had a pool enclosure identical to the one required by the code, at least 4' tall, with a self-latching gate, with gaps small enough to prevent a child from climbing and the latching feature tall enough so a small child cannot reach it. Unfortunately, the self-latching features are not perfect, malfunction often, and do not last forever. And worse, from a distance, it is difficult to tell whether the gate was properly latched. Because the adults at the party knew that there was a self-latching gate and from a distance it seemed like it was latched, they developed a false sense of security and allowed the child to roam freely through the yard. Whether it was the wind or the child's own ability to pull back the gate that was not properly latched, somehow he got into the pool, and by the time we all noticed he was missing it was too late. The devastation and horror of the scene have stayed with me all my life. It was horrific.

    As a result, I do not trust the self-latching gates around pools to protect children from drowning. It seems obvious to me that the automatic safety cover does a much better job by isolating the water completely, making it less likely to attract children to it in the first place, and they support the weight of several adults on top of it so there is no risk of anyone falling in. They also have a backup power source in case of a power outage, and can open or close in seconds with the turn of a key. In addition, it has a sensor that prevents people from being trapped underneath it. Of course the more layers of protection one has the safer they are. However, realistically, there is a serious financial limitation on having to put both the enclosure AND the automatic safety cover in. So if I have to choose between the two, I should be able to choose the safer choice. The problem is, my town does not allow it.

    Their code (as it stands) is forcing us to put in the enclosure in order to get the CofO. We feel that we are being forced to choose the less safe choice over the safer one just to meet the code. It seems like a violation of our rights. So we went to the Board of Trustees meeting, and petitioned for an amendment in the code that would allow for either the enclosure or the automatic safety cover to meet the code. We just want them to add the horrizolntal fences as al alternative that also meets the code. They asked for studies indicating that the automatic safety cover is just as safe or safer than the enclosure required in the code. I searched online, and although I found many articles on it confirming that statement, we could not find the printable version of the studies that gave rise to the statistics they speak of all over the Internet, and we need those studies from a credible source in order to be able to choose the safer choice for my family because we cannot afford both.

    Please let us know if there is anything you can provide us that can help us accomplish this much needed change.

    Thank you very much for your time.

    Very truly yours, Scott and Camila

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