Posts Tagged ‘patio’

Swimming Pool Heaters

Friday, July 8th, 2011

The most expensive aspect of owning a swimming pool is the construction of it. Maintenance is also costly. Therefore, those who have garden swimming pools usually attempt to get as many hours of use out it as they can. This equates to sitting in the garden at the poolside whenever possible and inviting friends and family around to share it all with them.

However, there is one more thing that you can do to increase the number of hours you can spend in your pool – you can lengthen the season that you are able to use it in. The temperature of the water is the only real constraint on swimming outdoors, it does not really matter whether it is snowing or raining as long as the water is warm enough.

Swimming in the rain, the mist and the snow is actually great fun, at least as much fun as swimming in the sunshine, as long as the water is warm enough and there is no lightening. The answer is to install a water heater into your swimming pool system.

A swimming pool water heater can have a drastic effect on the amount of time you can spend in your pool. If you set the thermostat at 78-80 F (about 25 C), you can double the amount of time you can spend in the water. If you live in a warm part of the country, you may just require to heat the water by a couple of degrees to be able swim in luxury.

A large body of heated water will lose most of its heat through its surface area, so it is a good idea to cover your pool with a good quality insulation blanket-cum-pool cover. The insulated pool blankets will lessen your heating bills quite considerably and it will increase the level of pool safety considerably as well.

The most common systems for heating swimming pool water are liquid petroleum gas (LPG) or oil fired. These systems are simple to set up and comparatively cheap to run. Electricity is also used, but it is not economical. If you live in the correct area meaning that you just require to raise the water temperature a couple of degrees, you could use solar power.

The difficulty with solar power is the profit margin the retailers want to make. If you make your own panels, purchase in kit form or purchase secondhand panels, solar power would be the best approach, if you have the sun, but not quite enough heat.

At the time, gas-powered swimming pool water heating is still by far the simplest to install and run and so offers the best answer to heating your pool. You will be able to get LPG water heaters secondhand from numerous sources and you will be able to buy new from the Net too. EBay is another good source of LPG swimming pool water heaters

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on several topics, but is now involved with Plus Size Bikinis. If you would like to know more, please go to our web site at Swimwear for Big Busts.

Garden Swimming Pool Safety

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

If you own a swimming pool, you have to be aware of the safety aspects concerning that pool. There is no counter-argument, that is one of the legal duties of an owner of a swimming pool . You are going to get people coming around who cannot swim; people who have eaten or drunken too much and should not swim; children and skinny-dipping teenage intruders and you have to provide a safe environment in which to swim for all or them or deny access.

The first aspect of swimming pool safety to undertake is the denial of access and the easiest way of doing this is the erection of a security fence. It will deny access to passing children, interlopers and friends who came around to see you on the off-chance when you were not in.

There are thousands of drownings by misadventure in garden swimming pools each year – most of them are children and drunks, who would still be alive today, if the pool had been locked up.

If you have your own children who are unable to swim, get them taught as soon as you can and drill some safety routines into them. For example, they must never get in the pool without an adult overseeing them and they should always wear flotation devices, which means that you should always have flotation devices on hand.

You will require waist rings, arm bands and life jackets. Those for use in a swimming pool by children are not costly and can be inflatable. It is also a good idea to have some pieces of styrofoam floating about just in case someone gets tired all of a sudden.

Make sure that there is always a capable swimmer on hand who knows basic First Aid, especially artificial respiration with particular reference to drowning. In fact, why not take the whole family down to the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade and all get your life-savers certificate? The least you should have is a proper life belt – ocean-going – on a rope that is long enough to reach anywhere in your pool and tie off the loose end.

It may be possible to get away with not erecting a security fence, if you use an above ground swimming pool, but you will have to confirm with the local authorities on that one. You will also have to remove the access ladders when it is not in use. Forgetting to do so could equate to criminal negligence if anyone were to drown in your pool.

Swimming pool safety is primarily about saving lives but it is also about the peace of mind of the owner of the swimming pool. If someone were to drown in your pool and you knew that you had not done everything within your power to prevent it, you would almost certainly carry that burden of guilt with you for the rest of your life, particularly if it was a child and even more so if it was your child or the child of one of your guests.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on several topics, but is now involved with Plus Size Bikinis. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Swimwear for Big Busts.

Pool Safety Fences: A Buyer’s Guide

Sunday, June 12th, 2011

If you have had a swimming pool for some time or if you are about to get one – either an above-ground or an in-ground swimming pool – you must check to see whether your district requires you to take any safety precautions. For example, some states in America call for the erection of a swimming pool safety fence by law, others are about to introduce such a law and others are thinking of calling for a pool alarm too.

However, it is not all one-sided. There are also advantages to the owner of the pool of installing a pool safety fence. The main benefit of such a fence is safety. If you have young children or grand-children, you do not always have the time to supervise them playing in the pool, so a fence is a way of allowing the kids to play in the garden whilst excluding them from the dangerous pool.

Kids can be scallywags, all adults know that even if some parents think that their own kids are not, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone else thinks they are. Our children know that they have to behave in front of us, but what happens while they know that we are not watching? You know, you were a kid yourself once. I climbed the fence into the municipal outdoor pool more than once whilst I was a teenager and mostly after a few beers.

The fact is that if you have an unprotected pool, there is a good chance that the local kids will use it when you are away and these days that means negligence on behalf of the pool owner. Whether that is right or wrong, it is like that and if someone should drown in your pool, you would be in big trouble, unless you could prove that your took reasonable measures to prevent unauthorized access to your pool.

A security pool fence is just about the cheapest way of doing that, although fences can be easily scaled as I full-well know. However, having a fence shows that you have thought about the issue and that you have tried to deter intruders.

There are quite a number of acceptable styles of pool fencing but it might vary from district to district, so it is first worth checking whether there are any local minimum standards in force in your region. Other than that, there are choices of wire, timber and steel. Wire can include mesh fences too.

Timber probably looks the best and gives the most options. If you want total privacy, you can have a full fence or if you would like to be able to see out, you could go for hit-and-miss vertical boarding. I do not like mesh, personally. I have painted tens of miles of fencing in my time and there always seems to be litter caught in the mesh. Iron railings are nice too, but pretty expensive.

Whichever sort of fence you go for, grow a continuous wall of the prickliest, thorniest bushes you can find about the base of it. Pyracanthas are good and the berries attract birds – wild birds, that is. Let them grow to three or four feet high and they will deter drunks and afford the ladies some privacy while lying around the pool.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on several topics, but is now involved with speedo swimming costumes. If you would like to know more, please visit our web site at Swimwear for Big Busts.

Why You Should Install A Pool Alarm

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

Do you own a swimming pool or are you thinking of having one fitted? If so, then it is recommended that you have a pool alarm fitted too. You could be wondering if you really need such an alarm, but all will be revealed in the rest of this piece. A pool alarm can be incorporated into your present burglar alarm system, if it is flexible enough.

One of the reasons for installing a pool alarm is that it may be required by law, national or local. Numerous kids have been drowned skinny dipping in a neighbour’s pool when they are away on holiday.

Some local authorities insist on putting up fences, but they are largely ineffectual, so the move is towards pool alarms. This does not certainly have to be costly because most people who can afford a pool will have a home alarm system already.

If your local authority does not have requirements for alarms already, it might be worth checking out what legislation is in the pipeline. Most of the contemporary pool alarms are activated whilst there is a disturbance at water level, so they are good for deterring night-time aquatic intruders.

However, it obviously does not only warn about interlopers, sometimes people fall into the pool because they are drunk. The alarm will permit you to rescue them. It will also warn about children falling into the pond, which is a continuous source of anxiety for parents with pools.

Because a great deal of pool owners are no longer young and their children are grown up, they frequently ask themselves why they need to secure their pool. Well, one good reason, besides saving lives, is that it can reduce your insurance premium. To be frank, it shows that you are trying and so reduces your liability.

Pool safety devices are easy to install, especially if you already have a warning device, scanners and siren fitted on your property. For most people who can afford a pool, the price of an alarm is off-set against the peace of mind that it will deliver is quite minimal.

While you go searching for a pool alarm, there are lots of places for you to look, but the best place to go first of all is the supplier of your existing home security system. This is because they will be the best people to be able to integrate the two systems so that you do not have two sets of sirens, two sets of detectors and two sets of everything else.

Once you have had a pool alarm fitted, you have one further moral responsibility and that is to make certain that it works. This is easy. Set your alarm and jump into the water. Reset the alarm and walk up to your pool. In both circumstances, the pool alarm must have been triggered.

You should check your alarm every month or two in conjunction with checking your existing home security system. This is a necessary precautionary step, because you cannot expect items to keep working for years without requiring some maintenance.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on several topics, but is now concerned with speedo swimming costumes. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Swimwear for Big Busts.