Pool Safety Tips - Key Takeaways
- Pool safety tips are essential for reducing the risk of drowning and injuries during summer swimming activities.
- Always supervise children around water, and never swim alone to ensure immediate help is available in emergencies.
- Educate yourself and others on water safety skills, including swimming and CPR, to prepare for potential incidents.
- Secure your pool when not in use with barriers and safety devices to prevent accidents.
- Stay informed about weather conditions before swimming, as storms can pose significant dangers.
- Practice good hygiene and follow rules at public pools to maintain water safety and health.
- Consult your insurance provider to ensure you have appropriate coverage for pool-related incidents.
Lifesaving Pool Safety Tips Everyone Should Know to Stay Safe Around Water
Nothing helps you beat the heat better than taking a dip in a pool. Whether you enjoy splashing around with friends, showing off your awesome diving skills, or relaxing on a funky pool floatie, it’s a quintessential summer activity. But as much fun as it can be, it can be just as dangerous, so it’s important to follow some basic pool safety tips.
The team at Morison Insurance wants you to stay safe while you’re having fun. That’s why we’re sharing some of our top pool safety tips. From water skills and CPR to securing your pool and washing before entering the pool, following these tips can help ensure you get the most enjoyment out of your pool time.
Why Practice Pool and Water Safety?
As much as a pool can be a fun or relaxing place to enjoy yourself, it can also be full of danger. From the hard surface around your pool to the bottom of the deep end, there are plenty of ways for you or a loved one to injure themselves or worse. So, it is important to ensure proper pool practices and employ some basic pool safety tips to prevent any unfortunate event.
While your home insurance should contain swimming pool coverage for your backyard pool, everyone can agree that it’s best to follow basic pool safety tips and not have to use it. Additionally, should you be injured at someone else’s pool or a public swimming pool, you would still have to deal with the aftermath of the incident, even if the third party was held liable for the incident.
Our Top Public and Home Pool Safety Tips
1. Never Swim Alone, Even if You Are an Experienced Swimmer
While it can be tempting to take a solo dip, it’s best to ensure you have a watcher or you are in the pool. The reason for this is that should you end up in trouble while on your own, you can end up drowning before anyone realizes what is happening. So, our first pool safety tip is never to swim alone. At home, this could look like having someone waiting poolside for you while you swim laps or employing the buddy system at a public pool. Either way, having someone with you can save your life.
2. Supervise Children In or Near Water
Kids love splashing around in pools, but a basic swimming pool safety tip is to never leave them unattended around one, even if they are on the pool deck and not actually in the water. Children, especially young children, are not the best swimmers, and should they slip and fall or get tired while swimming, it can have dangerous consequences. Always ensure the proper supervision of children when around pools and other open water areas.
3. Stay Away From Drains, Suction Outlets, Loose Drain Covers, and Other Openings That Cause Suction
While drains are a crucial part of water filtration and circulation for a pool, they can be dangerous to pool users. Getting too close to a drain or suction outlet can cause suction entrapment, which is nearly impossible to get out of without help and can result in disembowelment and other severe injury or drowning death. So for this pool safety tip, ensure your children and anyone else using the pool know to stay away and not swim near these areas, and install anti-entrapment drain covers and devices to reduce the suction force and prevent any direct contact with the drain.
4. Learn to Swim
While this may seem like basic knowledge and not a pool safety tip, ensuring everyone who uses your pool can swim properly and has water survival skills will go a long way in keeping everyone safe. After all, if you know how to swim, even if you lose your flotation device, you can ensure you are able to swim to the side of your pool and get out. So, take swimming lessons and enroll children in them to ensure that everyone who uses your pool can swim. Use life jackets or water wings for the inexperienced swimmers and keep a close eye.
5. Learn CPR for Children and Adults
Learning CPR is a crucial pool safety tip because, as cliche as it sounds, it can save a life. CPR is crucial for drowning victims, so if you have a pool area at home or your family uses one regularly, get certified and stay up to date on your certification. There are plenty of CPR training programs available throughout Ontario, such as the ones at the Red Cross.
6. Always Watch the Weather
The weather can turn in an instant, and you don’t want to be caught in any body of water should lightning strike. So before spending a day at the pool, check the day’s weather forecast as part of your overall pool safety tip checklist. If it’s clear, you’re good to go. But if it calls for rain or thunderstorms, it may be best to consider alternate arrangements.
7. Secure Your Pool or Hot Tub When Not in Use
Even when the pool is not in use, you still need to practice good pool safety tips. This means you need to secure your private pool or spa and other water areas, such as hot tubs and spas, when not in use. This can include erecting four-sided fencing, having a self-closing and self-latching gate, closing and securing pool covers, locking or removing steps and ladders, and setting door alarms from the pool to your home should someone attempt to access it. This way, you can minimize the risk of any accidents in or around the pool when no one else is there or paying attention.
8. Empty Kids' Pools After Use
You can drown in even just a few centimeters of water. Even if you just have an inflatable pool for your kids’ enjoyment, you still need to practice pool safety tips. That’s why one of our pool safety tips is to empty any kids' pools when not in use. Not only will this help cut back on the mosquito population, but it will also help prevent accidents caused by kids or adults tripping and falling into the water.
9. Practice Sun Protection
The best pool days are hot and sunny. Unfortunately, these are also prime conditions for sunburns and heat stress. That’s why protecting yourself from the sun and heat is a good swimming pool safety tip. Ensure you and any kids are wearing waterproof sunscreen that is reapplied regularly, set up umbrellas and shaded areas, and ensure everyone stays properly hydrated when using the pool. Another good pool safety tip is to keep an eye out for signs of heat stroke or exhaustion such as heavy sweating, dizziness, nausea, and muscle cramps, and get anyone suffering from these signs out of the pool and into a safe area.
10. Obey Rules and Signage at Public Pools
When using a public pool, you must not only follow these swimming pool safety tips but also obey the pool rules, posted signage and directions from the lifeguards. These rules and regulations are there to keep everyone safe, and failure to obey them can get you banned or hurt others.
11. Ensure Proper Hygiene
Proper hygiene practices are crucial to ensuring the enjoyment and health of anyone using a pool. Public pools especially see a higher volume of users, and while they employ chemicals and have heavy-duty cleaning and filtration systems, they don’t rid the water of every contaminant. Recreational Water Illnesses (RWIs) can be spread by bacteria, viruses, and parasites that enter the water supply, causing health problems like diarrhea, skin infections, and respiratory issues. To prevent the spread of illness, shower before and after swimming, avoid entering the water when ill, use waterproof bandages to protect open wounds, avoid urinating in the water, and regularly check and change swim diapers to protect the water quality.
Don't Forget About Insurance to Use Your Pool Safely
If you have a pool at home, ensure your home insurance policy has the protection you need in the worst-case event. Talk to your Morison Insurance broker about how you can protect yourself with the right insurance and other swimming pool safety tips so you and your friends and family can enjoy yourselves this summer. Whether it’s a backyard pool, an above-ground one, a toddler pool, or a local recreation center facility, practicing these pool safety tips can ensure everyone enjoys themselves.
Contact us today by calling 1-800-463-8074, or submit a form to get a quote for pool insurance coverage from Morison Insurance.
