The potty-style skimmer, from ordinary part to national ban

A part that was ordinary, and is now banned

A drained pool is where the old parts are visible, and one of them is not a matter of taste. Product Safety Australia, the national product safety regulator, states the position in one sentence: there is a permanent ban on pools and spas with unsafe design features like potty-style skimmer boxes and outlets that do not prevent entrapment of hair and body parts. The ban’s own page is blunt about the reason: swimming pools and spas with potty-style skimmer boxes are unsafe, and they are not designed to reduce or minimise the likelihood of trapping a person’s body or hair when in use. The ban page names penalties for suppliers: significant penalties may apply to suppliers who fail to comply with product bans.

What the part is

The ban describes its own subject. A potty-style skimmer box looks like a children’s potty or toilet, operates at water level as a suction point for circulating the water and trapping leaves and other debris, and has no fixed protective device to stop a person becoming lodged or caught by the suction when in use.

The pool it came in has a date, and the 2009 warning issued by South Australia’s Deputy Commissioner for Consumer Affairs, published on Product Safety Australia’s site, gives it: many in-ground fibreglass pools built in the 1980s had skimmer boxes incorporated into the moulding of the pool, with the design resembling a seat and having an easily removable cover.

The timeline of one part

The 1980s

Skimmer boxes moulded into in-ground fibreglass pools, shaped like a seat with an easily removable cover, in the words of the 2009 warning by South Australia’s Deputy Commissioner for Consumer Affairs.

1989

Such pools have been banned from supply in South Australia since 1989. This ban is South Australia’s own and is stated for South Australia only.

2003

The Australian standard current when the 2009 warning was written, introduced in 2003, set out requirements for the design and placement of skimmer boxes. This standard is national, unlike the 1989 South Australian supply ban beside it.

2009

South Australia’s Deputy Commissioner for Consumer Affairs warns pool owners after a Western Australian boy suffered serious injuries from sitting on a skimmer box, and urges owners to check that skimmer box covers are adequately secured at all times.

Today

Product Safety Australia’s permanent ban on pools and spas with unsafe design features, which names potty-style skimmer boxes and outlets that do not prevent entrapment.

The 2009 warning also describes one incident in its own words: when the four year old boy sat on a skimmer box, vital internal organs were sucked from his body. The age of the pool matters to its finding: the warning adds that the recent Western Australian incident it discusses occurred in a swimming pool that was nearly 30 years old with a seat-style skimmer box, and that older pools may not comply with the current safety standard, which is why it urges owners to check that the skimmer box covers are securely fastened.

The national checks, in the regulator’s words

The ban’s own page answers the question a renovator asks first, which is how to tell. It says: if you are moving to a home with an existing pool and spa you should check for skimmer boxes, and it sets out the checks.

• Check that it does not have an open, potty-shaped skimmer box that children or adults can sit on.
• Make sure it does not have single bottom drainage outlets at the bottom of the pool or spa, and if it does, avoid using the pool or spa.
• Avoid using spas or swimming pools that have moulded skimmer boxes with no lid or a lid that children can easily remove.
• If the pool or spa does not meet the Australian and American voluntary standards, stop using it and replace the skimmer box, outlets, filters or covers with models that do comply.

The ban states the risk in its own words as well: if a child gets trapped in a potty-style skimmer box, they are at risk of getting serious internal injuries or drowning.

Western Australia’s own check

WA Consumer Protection, whose safety alert is published on Product Safety Australia’s site, describes the same part to the same effect: to a child, an uncovered skimmer box looks like a potty or seat. One Western Australian council carries the practical line for its residents, and names the remedy: skimmer boxes can be dangerous, children have been seriously hurt or killed by open top skimmer boxes, and a conversion kit from a local pool shop is what the City of Canning points residents to.

The 2009 warning gives the maintenance habit that goes with the part: if the cover cannot be adequately secured, consumers are advised to have the cover modified.

The other dated parts

Two more old parts have their own rules, and neither has a national ban behind it.

The first is a house wall doing duty as a pool fence. NSW Fair Trading: older swimming pools might include doors or windows as part of the pool fence or barrier, and this is no longer allowed. Western Australia dates the same practice: an outdoor pool or spa barrier generally may not use child-resistant doors, unless the pool was approved or put in before 5 November 2001.

The second is a cover doing duty as a barrier. In Tasmania, a cover over the pool or spa does not count as a compliant barrier. South Australia states the spa case with its reasons: child-resistant hard covers cannot be used as safety barriers in place of a fence for above-ground spa pools because there are no current regulatory standards for spa pool covers, and when the cover is off the spa pool there is no barrier.

What comes out, and what stays

The list is short once the dates are read together. A potty-style skimmer box, a single bottom drainage outlet, a lid a child can remove: those are what the ban page’s checks name, in the regulator’s own words. Doors and windows that were part of a barrier belong to a rule that has changed. In Tasmania a cover is not a compliant barrier, and in South Australia a hard cover cannot replace a fence for an above-ground spa.

The money and the licence for the rest of the work are the subject of Who may do each part of the work? Where the barrier itself is being rebuilt while the pool is empty, the walk it will have to pass is the inspection guide.