vacation house pool safety
Hi, we are staying at a rental house with family this summer that has an in ground pool and there does not appear to be a fence completely around it. We have a 3 year old who is pretty good at listening/rules but is still 3, and I worry about the times we can't be vigilant like if he decides to go exploring while we're asleep. Apart from being constantly vigilant, are there other solutions folks have found to safety? Keep him in floaties all the time? alarm the doors to the house with portable alarms? is there some sort of portable fencing or alarms that could be bought in advance?
Thanks for advice!
Jul 7, 2021
Parent Replies
Maybe the house has an alarm, which you'd arm at night, so you'd be alerted if anyone exits. Otherwise, I think this is a case where the house might not be a match for your family stage of life.
It seems like there should be a fence and lock, or that isn’t safe and I would look elsewhere. Can you ask the rental owner?
Otherwise, maybe securing the room where the child is sleeping so that there is no chance of them being up while you are sleeping, which could be terrible for safety for reasons other than the pool as well.
I wouldn’t chance it with a pool and a young child…too many accidents happen in a flash.
They make pool alarms you can buy off Amazon that will detect the immersion, which is a reasonable solution, but the reality is that I wouldn't necessarily rely on them.
Many pools have safety covers--it's generally against code to have neither a safety cover nor a fence; it's worth asking the rental host about it.
Hi, maybe you already tried this, but if not I would ask the owner if they have a fence that can be put up. We rented a house once and it turned out there were little holes all around the pool for a safety fence that can be easily removed or put in place. I would never have known if we hadn't asked.
Find a new place. move on, and chalk it up to experience.
Hi! Perhaps consider purchasing and bringing along a pool alarm. These are floating devices you put in the pool, set, and then it senses movement/motion in the water (like if someone were to get in, or fall in). The are LOUD enough to wake you up at night. Just search Amazon for "pool alarm" and you'll see many options. They look to be $150 - $300, so not cheap, unfortunately, but it might bring you some peace of mind. Good luck!
We’ve been in this situation a couple times. We’ve brought safety gates (the tension-rod type) with us on vacation and installed them to block access to pools. Sometimes all access points can’t be blocked with a gate though. We’ve moved furniture to limit access points. And yes, we’ve brought floaties and had a rule that anytime our kid was outside the floaties had to be on, even if we were nearby. Our kids don’t get up and wander in the night so I didn’t worry about that. But if yours do, and you can’t completely block access to the pool, I would plan to alarm doors or bring child-proof door knob covers and sleep next to any door you can’t alarm or childproof.
My Dad’s house has a pool and 5 interior doors that exit into the pool deck. We stay in a room where the deadbolt locks from the inside with a key. There are also high locks at each door that my kids couldn’t reach even on a chair when they were small. And we were careful to not let our kids see how we unlocked the door when they were little.
It was extremely stressful to stay there when our kids were little. I fished my youngest out of his pool on more than one occasion - she was required to wear a life jacket 100% of the time when outdoors. Still she managed to float herself face down once.
I still find it stressful to stay there - almost even more now that my kids can swim a bit but don’t know their boundaries.
In any case, a “vacation” where a 3 yr old can get to a pool is NOT a vacation. At least that was our experience. The constant vigilance required was a lot. The locks helped. Alarming the doors helped. The life jacket (NOT floaties) helped. But we were always on. And despite all that, we definitely have had a couple of scary incidents over the years.
You're amazingly thoughtful.
There's a pool alarm in amazon shopping.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003AXMD90/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_5QM6M2…
Too dangerous without a complete childproof fence around the pool. Nightmare scenario. Don't do it.