My dad has just had a swimming pool installed in his tiny backyard. No discussion, no muss, no fuss – just a pool, all of a sudden. I didn’t even know that he was into swimming.
Dutifully, I went over there today to check it out. It’s a lap pool that runs up alongside the back fence, then takes a right angle to make its way towards the house before taking a second right angle to snake back up in the direction of its starting point. It’s an unusual design, to say the least.
The first thing I noticed, though, was the fact that there was no safety fence around it. I asked dad if he was aware that he needed to have one to comply with the legal regulations around swimming pools. Of course, he refused to accept this being the case for quite a while before bending to the omniscience of the internet, which I used to pull up evidence for my case. It sort of blows my mind that he was able to get a pool built without picking up on this info, but whatever.
We ended up having a natter about what type of fence would best reflect whatever it was that he was going for when he signed up for this. His neighbour has aluminium pool fencing; Melbourne, though, is the kind of place where people can’t stand having the same thing as their neighbour. Combine that with the fact that my dad is the kind of dude who, on a whim, puts in a U-shaped lap-pool that takes up most of his yard, and an aluminium pool fence is pretty much ruled out.
I think we settled on the idea of semi frameless pool fencing – Melbourne doesn’t have too much of that yet, according to dad. Plus, the glass panels will give him an unencumbered view of his odd design from his back porch, and allow him to keep an eye on his unruly collection of ornamental cacti while doing his Pacman-style laps.