A Mosman pool fence is usually a fence on a staircase. The house sits up the hill, the pool is cut into a terrace below it, and the garden keeps falling towards the water. Each of those level changes is a place where a fence can come up short.
Setting out on a slope
The rule is simple to state. The glass has to be at least 1200 mm above the finished ground on the outside, measured wherever a child could stand. On a flat courtyard that’s one number. On a terrace with a garden bed dropping away below it, the measurement changes every few panels.
We handle it in one of two ways. Stepped panels sit level and drop at each post or spigot, which looks tidy and keeps standard sizes in play. Raked panels are cut to follow the fall in a straight line, which looks cleaner on a long run but means every panel is made to order. On most harbour terraces we end up with a mix.
The fixing depends on what’s underneath. Where the terrace is concrete or sits on sandstone, spigots are core-drilled straight in, leaving only a small round fitting at the base of each panel. Where the edge is a garden bed or a retaining wall top, we may need a footing or a side-fixed spigot instead.
Keeping the view
People in Mosman choose glass for the view, so the fence shouldn’t take it back. Frameless panels on spigots have no posts to look past. A recessed channel hides even that, though it has to be built into the slab, so it suits a new terrace better than an existing one.
If the house has a deck or balcony looking over the pool, it can take the same glass as a balustrade. The two are separate barriers with separate rules. A balustrade needs to be at least 1 m high where the fall is 1 m or more, and a pool fence needs 1200 mm, so the heights won’t match exactly.
Salt air and the hardware
The glass doesn’t care about salt. The steel does. Close to the harbour, cheaper stainless picks up rust spots quickly, so we fit marine-grade or duplex spigots and hinges. Ask about it on any quote you compare, because the grade is easy to leave off.
Before you book
Mosman Council runs a pool barrier inspection program, and you can apply to Council for a certificate of compliance or ask them to inspect. An accredited private certifier can do the same. Replace an old fence with glass and the new barrier has to meet AS 1926.1-2012, whatever age the pool is.
NSW pool barrier
- Minimum height
- 1200 mm from finished ground level
- Gap under the barrier
- 100 mm or less
- Gaps between uprights
- 100 mm or less
- Non-climbable zone
- 900 mm arc outside, plus 300 mm inside
- Boundary fence as barrier
- 1800 mm high
- Gate
- Self-closing, self-latching, opens away from the pool
- Standard
- AS 1926.1-2012 for pools built after 1 May 2013 and any modified barrier
Source · NSW Government, Pool owner obligations
The full NSW rules, including gates and the 900 mm zone outside the fence, are on our glass pool fencing page.
