Barrier checks more important than ever

With Australians spending more time in and around the home, it has become increasingly important to check for and remove potential safety hazards.

To help protect families, leading Australian gate hardware supplier Safetech Hardware has furthered their mutual commitment with Kidsafe to promote child safety, particularly around swimming pools and water.

“We have been working with Kidsafe for several years with water safety education campaigns such as the Safe Barriers Save Lives and the Safety Ninja to remind everyone to check their pool barrier regularly and to ensure children are always supervised when they are around water,” says general manager Debbie Brennan.

“It is critically important that we all do everything we can to ensure the safety of our children in and around water, and part of this is regularly checking the pool or spa barrier to ensure it is operating correctly.”

Resources including videos and safety checklists can be found at the Safetech website, even including a service to send a reminder when it’s time to check your pool barrier.

“This is a small way we can assist the community and a friendly reminder is always a bonus,” says Brennan.

The service is open to all pool and spa owners.

Australian research and development

Safetech Hardware’s Melbourne-based research and development department has drawn on skilled local and overseas talent to provide creative product solutions to some of the pool and spa industry’s most complex challenges.

“We manage all aspects of the design, manufacture and distribution of our award-winning pool and garden gate hardware range,” says Brennan.

“Our research and development team comes with decades of custom hardware manufacturing experience, and this goes a long way in ensuring our products are safe, simple to use, and will stand up to our diverse Australian climate. We are so confident of this that we provide a limited lifetime warranty.”

She says their award-winning TriLatch is a perfect example of how the Safetech team has gone the extra mile with a unique push-hold-lift safety button, providing an affordable child-safety solution.

“Let’s face it, kids are clever. If they can find a rake or broom and use it to push up the top-pull release they will, but the push-hold-lift safety release button will eliminate this problem. It’s the simple solutions that are often the best.”

Testing procedures

Brennan says maintaining their high standards is paramount to the Safetech Hardware team.

“We implement several distinct testing procedures to maintain the quality and identify any improvements we can make,” she says.

These procedures include:

• During the production phase, samples from every batch are subjected to rigorous

testing. The process is then repeated in the warehouse/distribution hub.

• Engaging several independent NATA-accredited laboratories to undertake external

testing to ensure the products exceed Australian Standards for durability, strength and rigidity, as well as salt spray testing to ensure they will withstand the test of time, and load testing of the hinges.

• Additionally, their own internal testing facilities allow continuous cycle-testing to Australian Standards, and to test prototypes in development.

CAPTION: Safetech have been working with Kidsafe for several years on a variety of child safety campaigns