The gate is the most common reason a pool barrier fails inspection. What AS 1926.1 asks of it, and how to get it right first time.
If a pool barrier fails an inspection, the gate is usually why. The fence itself is static and easy to get right. The gate moves, and everything that moves has to keep working exactly as intended, every time, for years.
The gate must close and latch by itself from any position it is left in. Not just from wide open, which is the easy case, but from a few centimetres ajar, which is how a gate is actually left when someone walks through carrying something.
That last few centimetres is where cheap or badly adjusted hardware gives up. If you test one thing, test that.
Closing is not enough. It has to latch, and it has to latch without anyone touching it. A gate that swings shut and rests against the post is not compliant, however convincing it looks.
The gate must swing outward, away from the pool area. A child leaning on a gate that opens inward pushes it open. A gate that opens outward resists that.
This is decided when the gate is hung, so it is worth confirming with your installer before the posts go in rather than after.
The release must be out of a small child’s reach. In practice that means the latch sits high, and on the pool side, so reaching it from outside the barrier means reaching over rather than through.
Nothing may be positioned to make climbing to the latch easier, which is part of why the non climbable zone matters around gates specifically.
The 900 mm non climbable zone applies around the gate just as it does around the fence. The classic failures are all near gates, because that is where things get put down: a pot plant beside the gate, a pool pump housing, a bin, a step or retaining wall that happens to sit within reach.
Walk the gate approach specifically before your inspection.
We build pool gates to match the fence, in the same style, spacing and colour, so the gate reads as part of the run rather than an add on. They are supplied with self closing, self latching hardware rated for pool duty, so what your installer hangs is already set up to comply.
We do not install. Hanging a pool gate square, plumb and correctly adjusted is the part that decides whether it passes, so pool barriers are worth giving to someone who has done them before.
If your fence is fine and only the gate is the problem, we can build a gate to suit an existing run. Send a photo of what is there.
This guide covers pool fencing.
