We supply PoolPerf® both ways - installed by accredited local Trade Partners, and direct to people who’d rather do it themselves. We genuinely don’t mind which you choose, so this is about helping you pick well rather than steering you.

Start with the site, not the skill

The single biggest factor isn’t how handy you are. It’s what your ground does.

A flat, regular run along level paving is straightforward. Set your posts, fix your panels, hang the gate. Plenty of first-timers do exactly this and end up rightly pleased with themselves.

Falls, steps, retaining walls and awkward corners are a different proposition. They require raked panels made to specific angles, and they need the barrier height and the non-climbable arc to stay satisfied at every point along the run. That is measuring work with real consequences if you get it wrong - panels are made to your sizes and can’t be returned because a measurement was out.

What DIY actually involves

With PoolPerf® specifically: panels arrive fully assembled, weigh between 5 and 13kg, and need no specialised tools or hardware. It is not a fabrication job. You are installing finished panels, not building them.

The real work is:

  • Measuring accurately - post to post, from the bottom of the post, every bay individually
  • Setting posts properly - plumb, at consistent spacing, and cured before you load them
  • Hanging the gate - hinges at the right spacing, latch at the right height, and testing it thoroughly
  • Keeping the non-climbable zone clear - and understanding what that means

None of it is beyond a reasonably practical person. All of it has to be right at the same time.

What a professional install buys you

Not just labour. Mostly it buys you someone else’s judgment about the things that are easy to get wrong: how to handle the fall, where the gate should sit, what your council tends to look for, whether that retaining wall is going to be a problem.

It also buys you a finished job with a business standing behind it, which matters if you’re selling the property, dealing with an insurer, or simply don’t want the barrier to be your problem.

A few honest signals

Lean DIY if: your ground is flat or close to it; you’ve built a deck or a fence before; your timeframe is flexible; and the idea of doing it yourself appeals rather than daunts.

Lean professional if: there are steps, slopes or retaining walls; you need it done by a certain date; you’d rather someone else carried the compliance question; or you simply don’t want to spend the weekend on it.

You can also do both

This gets overlooked. A common and entirely sensible split is to have a professional handle the gate and any raked or stepped sections, and do the straight runs yourself. The gate is the fiddliest part and the most common point of failure; the straight runs are the easy bit.

The one thing that doesn’t change

Whoever installs it, the legal responsibility for maintaining a compliant pool barrier sits with you as the pool owner. A professional install makes it far more likely to be right on day one and gives you someone accountable if it isn’t - but the duty stays with you either way.

If you’re genuinely undecided, our four-question guide takes about thirty seconds and will give you a nudge one way or the other.

Written by the PoolPerf® team. We manufacture perforated aluminium pool fencing in Australia, so we have an obvious interest here - we’ve tried to be straight with you anyway.