It’s no surprise the interest in homes with pools rises with the temperature during each South Australian summer.

During the warmer months, our sales partners are often asked about regulations regarding pools complying to Australian standards.

There are strict rules in place to ensure people purchasing a property with a pool are protected.

Under Australian regulations, settlement on a home with a pool cannot be completed until the pool has a valid certificate of compliance.

Here are some key guidelines in SA, as outlined by the Swimming Pool and Spa Association of Australia.

If you are selling a property with a swimming pool, you must ensure requirements for pool safety are met. This may mean you have to upgrade fencing or barriers.

Child-safety barriers must comply with Minister's Specification SA 76D before settlement.

All swimming pools or spa pools must have a continuous safety barrier that restricts access by young children to the pool.

Pool fencing must:
• be an effective barrier to young children
• be permanent
• be designed to stop young children crawling under or climbing over it by using foot and hand holds
• be at least 1.2m high

Also, any boundary fences used as part of the child-safety barrier must be at least 1.8m high on the side that faces the pool, with a 900mm non-climbable zone at the top inside of the fence.

Gates to the pool area must:
• swing outward from the pool area
• be self-closing from any position
• be fitted with a latching device, out of reach of small children, at least 1.5m above ground level.

“Believe it or not, there are still quite a few properties with pools out there that aren’t fenced,” Toop&Toop direction Bronte Manuel says.

“When that property comes to market, what we do a lot of the time is we’ll leave the pool unfenced, even during the auction period.

“However, the vendor then obtains a quote for typically the cheapest form of fence, like a tubular fence, and then they say to the new owner ‘we will contribute this amount of money towards your new fence’.

“The new owner may want glass, they may want tubular, they may want timber.
“This way, the new owner gets the fence around the pool that what they want.”