Being cautious and keeping an eye on your children is not always enough to prevent drowning and submersion incidents during Georgia’s hot summer months. It helps to also install as many barriers in your home or community facility as possible so that children have a much more difficult time getting to the water and, as a parent or guardian, you have more time to realize they have disappeared. There are many types of barriers that can be installed in a home or community facility to make them safer, including door alarms, covers for pools and/or hot tubs, and fences and gates.
Fences and gates can be essential to keeping a child or infant away from the pool or backyard at all times. As long as the enclosure is at least four feet high and is free of obvious foot or handholds that a child could use to climb over it, it should be a great deterrent and could potentially save your child’s life.
The following guidelines for fences and gates, which were comprised by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, should help you determine what type of fence is necessary to keep your child away from the water at all times:
- All barriers should be at least four feet high
- If the enclosure is comprised of vertical slats, these should be no more than four inches apart
- If the door’s latch is located 54 inches from the bottom of the barrier, then its tip must be three inches from the top of the structure on the side that is facing the pool so that a child cannot reach over the door and unlock it.
Visit your local pool enclosure or fencing installation company to learn more about these guidelines and make sure the barriers you have installed are keeping your children as safe as possible.