Pool safety signs for water parks and recreation centres

We should say the useful thing first: of the signage a water park or council aquatic centre actually needs, we make two items. A resuscitation notice and a chemical storage sign. We do not make depth markers, attraction signage, wet floor signs, lifeguard notices or emergency exit signage, and earlier copy on this page implied we made all of them. If you are outfitting a whole facility, we are one supplier in that job rather than the whole of it.

What follows is what we can tell you about the rules, which for public aquatic facilities are stranger than most operators expect.

Western Australia: aquatic centres are the clearest case in the country

The Health (Aquatic Facilities) Regulations 2007, regulation 19(2), adopt the Department of Health's Code of practice for aquatic facilities. Clause 2.25.1.4 sits under the heading "Mandatory signage" and requires one or more resuscitation notices installed in a prominent position, easily seen by pool users and adjacent to the first aid area, kept up to date with the Resuscitation Council of Australia's recommended procedure for CPR. Council pools and aquatic centres are the first category named.

Penalties run from $100 to $1,000 for a first offence, a minimum of $500 for a third, and up to $100 a day for a continuing offence.

The clause mandates two more signs and this is where we fall short of the job: "NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY" and "NO USE OF FACILITY ALLOWED AFTER DARK", at 100mm lettering. That 100mm figure belongs to those two signs and not to the resuscitation notice, which the Code gives no size at all. We do not make either of them. The same Code also lists recommended signage at clause 2.25.2.3, where AS 2416 appears, and recommended is what it says.

Our Western Australia page has the whole structure.

Queensland and New South Wales: public facilities are carved out

This surprises people, so it is worth stating plainly.

Queensland excludes public pools operated by local government from the definition of a regulated pool, so the sign duty in section 13 of the Building Regulation 2021 does not reach a council aquatic centre. The duty that catches a suburban backyard does not catch the council pool down the road.

New South Wales excludes Crown and public authority pools from the Swimming Pools Act 1992. Same shape, different instrument.

Neither exclusion says a public facility needs no signage. It says the pool-fencing statutes are not where that duty would come from, which is why Western Australia's health regulations matter so much: they are the one place in the country where the duty for public facilities was actually written down.

Tasmania mandates signage, and it is not ours

Tasmania requires depth marking on public and club pools through its National Construction Code variation, and bather hygiene notices under the Recreational Water Quality Guidelines 2007. Those Guidelines contain no reference to resuscitation, CPR or first aid. So a Tasmanian aquatic centre has mandatory pool signage obligations, and a resuscitation notice is not among them. We make neither depth markers nor hygiene notices.

What we have not been able to close

  • Council by-laws and operating conditions were not searched. For a council-owned facility this limit bites harder than anywhere else on this site, because your operator's conditions are likely to be the instrument that actually governs your signage, and we have not read them.
  • ACT and Northern Territory health law was not searched. Western Australia's duty lives in health law while its building regulations look empty, so for a public facility in those two territories we regard the question as open, not answered.
  • Whether work health and safety law creates a first aid signage duty at a pool as a workplace. A staffed aquatic centre is plainly a workplace and this has not been tested.
  • AS 1926.1 and AS 1926.2 are paywalled and could not be read to confirm they contain no signage clause.

General information about what the instruments say, not legal advice. Compiled 4 August 2026.

The two signs we make that fit

The CPR sign is the resuscitation notice, 350mm by 710mm on aluminium composite panel with a full colour digital print, seven colours. Western Australia sets no size for it, so the panel is sized for reading rather than to a rule. At a facility with separate pools, the Code's placement test reads as more than one notice.

The Danger Chemical Storage sign is the back-of-house one. A public facility runs a plant room with bulk chlorine and acid, and it is a genuine hazard area that has nothing to do with the pool deck.

Two others exist and fit only partly. The standalone No Diving sign works at a shallow end. The Pool Rules sign was drawn for a home pool and its six rules assume a domestic setting, most obviously "Children must be actively supervised by an adult at all times", which is not how a lifeguarded facility operates. We would not put it on a wave pool.

Panels are not pre-drilled. A free installation pack ships with every sign; the installation kit is a spare. See the installation instructions.

For a facility order or several sites, volume pricing is on the wholesale page, or ask for a quote or call 1300 005 232.

If your site is a learn-to-swim centre rather than a recreation facility, the swim schools and aquatic centres page covers the questions specific to teaching pools.