Nearly 300 children under five years of age drown in swimming pools every year, with 4000 suffering from non-fatal swimming injuries.
Nearly 87% of such fatalities happen in backyard pools. If you have a swimming pool, adopting these rules is inevitable as a way to create layers of protection around your pool to safeguard children from accidents. In case you don’t have a pool and are planning to have one, take a look at these 5 rules for having a pool in your backyard.
1. Install Pool Fencing
There are several ways to reduce the risk of children drowning accidentally at your backyard pool and constructing and maintaining safety barriers, for example, pool fences, power safety covers, pool gates, and alarms are on the top of the list. If a barrier is useful, it should be able to prevent a child from either going through, over or under it to access to the pool. Ensure that no child can access the pool without adult supervision. Here are some guidelines that you can employ to prevent children from undermining the barriers.
• Erect a pool fence, on all the four sides of the pool
• The recommended pool safety fence should be about 4 feet high or even 5 feet
• Make sure that your fence is not designed such that children can use objects to climb over it
• Provided your home opens straight to the pool, installing alarms will be a smart idea
• Such an alarm should have a distinct sound from other alarm systems
• Ensure that every pool gate can close and latch by itself and should always be locked.
• Avoid having to pet doors or pet gates on your pool fence because small children are likely to crawl through them.
2. Set Up Anti-Entrapment Safety Drain Covers
Ensure that your pool is equipped with anti-entrapment safety drain covers. Children and even adults can easily be trapped by its powerful suction. Make sure children don’t stay close to pool drains, pipes, or any other openings that may endanger them as far as entrapment accidents are concerned.
3. Maintain Close Supervision of Children
Among the top pool safety guidelines is making sure to never leave a child unsupervised or beside your pool or hot tube. This also applies to all types of water bodies. Staying within arms-reach to smaller children and non-swimmers is obligatory. Provided you’re away from the pool and a child is missing, rush first to check out for the child in the pool and the neighbor’s pools too.
4. Learn to swim
Ensure that both children and adults living in your home are able to swim. It is ideal to give swimming lessons to children at least annually. Both nonswimmers and swimmers without experience are required to wear approved lifejackets. Make sure you don’t use floaties for small children so that they should not become dependent on them, which can make them take unnecessary risk.
5. Be Ready for Emergencies by:
Letting everybody in your home take water safety, First Aid, and CPR courses is ideal. Make sure to keep rescue equipment like floats and life-rings easily accessible and in perfect condition by the pool. Also, keep an easy-to-reach phone by the poolside alongside emergency numbers. Make sure to post your address too for the sake of guests, babysitters and your young children since memorizing your address may be difficult for them.
You can think of other relevant pool safety rules and instructions and institute as you share them with your family, babysitters, children, friends, and neighbors. Ensure that you have a homeowner’s policy that comprises coverage for liability lawsuits in case of injuries or death from a swimming pool accident.