Side-By-Side Comparison
To summarise, we take a look at the main criteria you should consider when making your pool secure, and see how each system stacks up:
Safety
Pool alarms don't prevent accidents, they only alert you after the event. Covers and abris do, but only when they're closed. So, from a safety perspective, a pool fence is the clear winner.
Ease of use
Pool alarms are a hassle. You're continually arming and disarming the alarm, not to mention apologising to your neighbour for the noise.
Abris are considerably more user-friendly, though there's still a certain amount of work opening and closing them to use the pool in the summer.
An electric pool cover is a good, easy-easy-to-use solution, allowing you to open and close the pool at the touch of a button, and requiring little maintenance. However, like an abri, a cover only provides protection against accidents when closed.
A safety fence, on the other hand, provides permanent 24 hr protection against a child accessing your pool area unsupervised, without you even having to think about it. They require almost no maintenance at all.
So once again, pool fencing is the clear winner.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics are very much a personal choice, so we rank the various solutions in terms of the impact they'll have on your environment.
At one end of the scale, an abri is going to have the biggest impact on your home.
A safety fence is considerably more discreet, and if well-designed and installed will be surprisingly unobtrusive.
Aesthetically, pool covers and alarms provide the most discreet solution, though the latter (in our opinion) serves little purpose.
