Swimming Pool Store

Swimming pools are great fun and a wonderful investment in your property, but one accidental drowning will cancel out any joy you could get from your pool.  The facts about pool accidents are chilling.  Most drownings involve children under five years old who were under the supervision of an adult. Also, most drownings take place when the child has been out of the parent's sight for less than five minutes.  Another sad statistic is that most parents who lose a child to a drowning accident end up divorcing.  One of the best ways to reduce the likelihood of such an unthinkable accident is to install a swimming pool alarm.

There are a number of pool alarms available.  Here are a few of the basic options.  You can put a battery operated alarm on the gate of the fence around the pool.  If your door opens into the pool enclosure, you can put an alarm on the door, and you can also put alarms on the windows.  A perimeter alarm monitors the entire perimeter of your pool and sounds if anything or anyone enters the pool area.  A voice alarm can be set up to let you know when anyone enters the pool area, and responds with your own chosen recorded message.  

Another type of alarm is a wave sensor.  With this type of alarm system, you place a floating sensor in the pool, which sounds if the water is disturbed.  You can also equip the wall or fence around your pool, or the pool itself, with passive infrared motion sensor alarms that will sound if anyone is around the pool.  A final choice that has been recently developed is a wrist alarm you attach onto the wrist of your child.  These alarms sound when they are placed underwater.

Each type of pool alarm has drawbacks, but each type is also an added insurance that should help make up the gap between a parent's best motives and the reality of supervising children.  No alarm will ever make it unnecessary to supervise a child, but they can certainly assist in the effort.  Here briefly are a few considerations to help you along in making a choice about a pool alarm or alarms.

First, most of the alarm types can be turned off when they are more of a nuisance than a help.  The problem here is that the parent will need to remember to turn them back on when they are needed again.  Another possible complication is if you have pets.  Pet doors are often large enough that a child can get through them.  In this case, an alarm on your door will not help much with a really determined child.  Any of the alarms that only work underwater, such as the wave sensor or the wrist band, mean that the child will already be in the water before you are alerted.  Will you have time to get to them before disaster happens?  And battery operated alarms can have the batteries run down when you least expect it.

Pool alarms are important, but they must be supplemented with parental supervision and training.  Part of a parent's job is to teach children about the dangers around them as well as supervising them around dangers.  With good training from attentive parents, a well chosen pool alarm can provide the added security needed to calm any worries about safety.