Bettacare Auto Close Stair Gate Safety Gate

For those of you who already have little children in the house, you will agree that safety in the home is paramount. Even if you have eyes in the back of your head, in your arms and legs and in every single room in the house, your child will still manage to wonder off undetected. It's great when they start to move, at first they progress slowly but it's only a matter of days before then can go from 0 -100 in the blink of an eye.

So ...
...start looking at stair gates, before he dive bombed down the stairs. At this point to me a stair gate was a stair gate, a gate that you fix across your stairs or to the entrance of a room to prevent children having accidents, or escaping from rooms. So how long would it take to purchase two gates! How wrong was I? There are millions (well not literally) to choose from. You can get: Pressure Fitting Stair Gates; Screw Fitting Stair Gates; Auto Close ... more

For those of you who already have little children in the house, you will agree that safety in the home is paramount. Even if you have eyes in the back of your head, in your arms and legs and in every single room in the house, your child will still manage to wonder off undetected. It's great when they start to move, at first they progress slowly but it's only a matter of days before then can go from 0 -100 in the blink of an eye.

So when our little one began to move we needed to start looking at stair gates, before he dive bombed down the stairs. At this point to me a stair gate was a stair gate, a gate that you fix across your stairs or to the entrance of a room to prevent children having accidents, or escaping from rooms. So how long would it take to purchase two gates! How wrong was I? There are millions (well not literally) to choose from. You can get: Pressure Fitting Stair Gates; Screw Fitting Stair Gates; Auto Close OR Auto Shut baby Gate; Extra Tall Baby Gates; Unique Space Stair Gate and Safety Gates to fit Diagonal Openings. That's just six to be getting on with for the moment, there are loads more.

So how do you decide what you want? Well firstly you need to measure the width of your stairs - BOTH top and bottom, as the top of our stairs is narrower than the bottom. So that caused an issue as I wanted matching stairs gates and all the ones we had seen so far on-line came in the standard width (75-82cm) with the ability to extend the gates if required. Nothing to make them narrower!

Whilst surfing we came across www.safetots.co.uk and bingo they had the gates for us. Pressure fitted gates, which means you don't need to drill holes in your walls. So if you have stairs where you can't drill holes, or like us just didn't want to make holes in the walls (as the gates are not going to be a permanent fixture), these are the ones for you. Then we came across the feature that excited both my husband and I (its amazing what you get excited by when you have children). Bettacare-Auto Close Stair Gate Safety Gate. Yes you read that correctly auto-closing gates, so there is no way you can forget to close the gate behind you. These gates also come in three different width fittings:

Standard Auto-Close Gate. Size: 75 - 82 cm
Narrow Auto-Close Gate. Size: 68.5 - 75.5 cm
Extra Narrow Auto-Close Gate. Size: 61 - 67 cm

The height of all the gates is 75.5cm.

Cost: £26.49

Hoorah, someone that makes narrow stair gates, as well as standard size gates and as an added bonus they are auto-closing gates!

The opening mechanism is at the top of the gate and out of reach of tiny hands. The gates can be opened one handed, all you do, is push the mechanism in with your thumb and lift the gate and either (depending upon how you have fitted them) pull or push the door and the gate is open. Once you have stepped through the gate closes behind you without slamming shut, and you can hear when the gate has clicked shut. Straight forward and simple, what more could you ask for.

The gates have a new type of locking handwheel which ensures that the gate is securely fixed to the walls. The locking handwheel is child-proof and can not be over tightened upon fitting, nor can it be worked loose whilst the gate is in use. The wall cups provided have self adhesive pads which can be used on smooth walls which are not decorated with wall paper. For those of you who do not have smooth walls or have wall paper, fear not you can still purchase these gates and use screws to fix the wall cups. My husband installed the gates and then were up and usable within 30 minutes.

The gates are also compatible to 'Y' Spindles for rounded stair posts. Just put the locking handwheel onto the 'Y' spindle and it will hold the gate securely on a rounded stair post. Should you need to extend your gates you are able to obtain additional extension bars. The 'Y' Spindles and additional extension bars are not included in the price and do cost extra.

As I mentioned earlier you can hear when the gate has clicked shut, which can cause a slight problem if your child is like our little one. When I have put him down for a nap or at the end of the day, every now and then I do like to check on him, as any parent would. However, with the gates in place he can hear you coming, so you can't just sneak up the stairs and peer through the slightly open door to see if he has fallen asleep or if he is still putting himself to sleep. He knows you are upstairs and then wonders why you haven't come in the room to pick him up, so he starts crying. So to over come this (and I must stress we only do this when our child is safely tucked up in his cot), we wedge the gate open. We do this on a daily basis (whilst our child is asleep, I do stress this again) and it has not affected the auto-closing mechanism in any way and the gates still close behind you automatically without fail.

So how safe are the gates you ask? Well nothing is perfectly safe, unless used properly. If we had two children in the house and one was asleep and the other awake, then obviously we would never wedge open the gates. So I feel that we use our gates correctly and safely. Also, I have not seen any small gaps or hinges were my little boy could trap his fingers. The only safety factor would be if he were to stand up holding on to the gate and then loose his balance, he may fall into the gate and bang his head on the metal. Apart from that we are happy with our auto-closing stair gates.

For further information on Bettacare-Auto Close Stair Gates please refer to www.safetots.co.uk

Here's to safety in your home! 

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