Who can issue a pool fence safety certification?

If you’re reading this its probably come to your attention that for some reason or another your need a pool safety certificate or as others call it a pool barrier certificate.

Who needs a pool safety certificate?

You’re either leasing your property, selling your property or it’s a local council initiative to have all pool in that particular council inspected and certified.

Pool certification is designed to ensure your swimming pool barrier is safe and also compliant to the NSW Swimming Pool Act, 2018 swimming pool regulations and suitable Australian standard 1926.1 for the year the pool was constructed.

Who can issue a pool fence certification?

You have a couple of options in NSW and Sydney on which business or authorities can help. If you to go with a Local Authority you can use the local council that applies to your property’s area. Simply contact your council and advise them you need a Swimming pool inspection to receive a pool fence certification.

Of course, there are fees involved which I’m sure they will advise your during the booking process. You must ensure your pool is registered though before you can actually arrange an inspection.

TIP: The pool will need to be registered regardless who you use to inspect your pool and receive a pool fence certificate.

NSW Pool Register – Click on the Register Pool button to begin.

Its quite a simple process to register the pool. NSW government has developed a simple to use pool register. Just follow the steps indicated on the site. There is even some basic checklist you can do to check your pool barrier. These checklists are basic and not 100 percent accurate so there can be some discrepancies on what your checklist has and what the pool certifiers say.

For more info, visit the Swimming Pool Register website: https://www.swimmingpoolregister.nsw.gov.au/

Who you can use for the pool fence certification?

I would suggest using private pool certifiers, such as Clear View, for the pool fence certification as we have found they are more inclined to help you and direct to the best method possible on achieving your safety certificate.

We at Clear View Property Inspections are licensed builders and experienced with new pool construction, new pool fence consultation experts, rectification and compliance pool barrier designs and advice. 

Clear View Pool Safety Inspector and Certifier

Sydney and NSW pool certifiers including your local authority will be looking at many different elements on the swimming pool fence. Swimming pool fence will also include your boundary fence if it’s used as part of the pool fence barrier.

I don’t want to get into too much detail on regulations and specifics in the write up.

One thing I will advise that pending when your pool was built the regulations may vary but in saying that there are very strict rules on potentially using earlier regulations or standards for older swimming pool fences and it may well not be within the rules to do so. We at Clear view property inspections have extensive experience on working with the regulations and achieving swimming pool barrier compliance with the least amount of work to your pool fence.

What are some items the pool certifiers will inspect to achieve your pool safety certificate in Sydney?

I will try and keep it as basic as possible not to overwhelm you. The good news is that we only inspect the pool barrier. Not the actual pool itself. So, the pool could be old and deteriorated and the certifiers really should not worry about that at all.

A vital part of the swimming pool certificate process is to check the pool fence height. The pool fence has to be 1200mm in height from finished floor level.

This does vary though for the boundary fence.

Of course, pending the year, the pool was built the boundary pool fence height may vary.

The latest Australian standard 1926.1-2012 has the boundary fence requirement of 1.8m high.

Robert of Clear View measuring a client’s pool barrier.

Some Things to Keep in Mind About Pool Safety Inspections

That’s a couple of basic checks you could expect.

Let’s look at some basic but important information about the swimming pool fence gate.

The pool gate must always open away from the pool. No ifs, no exemptions. This has always been the way and remains unchanged.

The Pool gate must be self-closing. This means that when you open the pool gate and let go the gate must self-close without any force from you. This should happen from the stopped position at any point of the pool gate opening.

Simple but important information as if your pool gate does not self-close you vastly increase your chances on leaving the gate open and susceptible to children accessing your swimming pool without supervision.

Next item to check is the pool gate lock. The Gate should be self-latching when in closed position. This means when the pool gate closes the lock should self-latch automatically. Its very important that these self-latching locks cannot be locked in the open position. If so, the lock could close prior to the door closing and the door will ultimately remain open.

I hope you enjoyed some of the information we have shared to give you hopefully giving you a better understanding on pool safety and certification process.

For more detailed information on Pool compliance information, we have another write up that will detail extensive information on checks to the entire pool barrier and how the standards differ with different pool construction dates.