IG Stair & Bench Options

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RecurveArcher

RecurveArcher

0
Jun 7, 2016
78
Noblesville, IN
Pool Size
32000
Surface
Plaster
Chlorine
Salt Water Generator
SWG Type
CircuPool RJ-60
We just purchased a house with a large IG pool that has no stairs, bench, ladder, or anything. There are holes on the deck where they used to have a drop-in ladder, but pretty rusted, filled in, there's no ladder to be found, and it looks like there's a big patch in the pool where they previously sent one of the ladder legs through the wall.

We could probably get a new ladder and fix up the existing holes to work but we have 4 kids, the youngest are 2 & 3, and play on the stairs & bench most of the time when at other pools. My wife also has a grandmother that's 92 and likes to swim. So a ladder isn't really ideal, we'd like to put in wedding cake steps at one if not both corners of the shallow end with a bench going between them - maybe do a tanning ledge or something in place of the stairs in one corner.

We had one contractor out who didn't even want to quote the stairs. He had some concern of the pool holding the extra weight of the concrete, so not sure if that's why he didn't want to quote or just didn't want to do it. Another contractor said it'd be no problem, cost around $5K, but then never sent an actual quote - I got an email weeks later saying they were too busy. I've had no luck even getting anybody else to even come and look at the pool, either they don't show up for the apt. or never return my calls in the first place.

Part of the issue as well is that the sides are very sloped; they're strait stainless steal for ~ 3' at the top, and then slope way out, about 2.5' before leveling out with the floor after a drop of 1.5'.

So... Does anybody have any recommendations on this? Any concern about the pool supporting the weight? Any other options than draining and doing solid concrete steps & bench? I've looked at some of the pre-fab stuff online, but it all seems to be made to go in liner pools.

Also, at this point we'll probably wait to do full reno until after this season, does anybody have suggestions on a step/stair solution to use for this year? Not sure what would work around the wall slope and either allow the auto-cover to close or be easily removable.

Thanks,
Sean
 
Welcome to TFP!

That's a pretty interesting set of requirements (and an autocover in the mix). But fun to consider. If you can post up a few pictures of the pool that would helpful for visual purposes. So is the exposed surface on the walls and angled portion near the floor SS? And then the exposed surface of the floor is plaster over gunite? If so, fascinating.

And again, if so, I too would have some reservation about the angled floor portion being able to support the gunite steps/benches not knowing what is behind them. I'm at a loss for a suggestion but will be interested to see pics and if others have suggestions as well.

Maybe the people you bought the house from were actually seals and they just glided/flopped themselves up on to the pool deck...
 
My understanding (one of the contractors described it to us) is that the SS walls are basically a 3' strip around the top of the walls, and then transitions to gunite maybe 6" from the bottom of SS wall. The SS would have originally been left visible, but at some point they re-plastered the bottom and painted all of it. Pictures are below, the flat portion would all be SS and then the angled and floor would be gunite/plaster.

So here's the shallow end, it's about 18.5' wide:

Shallow-End 1.jpg

Shallow-End 2.jpg

Shallow-End 3.jpg

Walls are obviously starting to stain through from lack of proper maintenance. The whole thing needs to be acid washed, painted, new coping, etc.

The circle in the middle near the transition to the slope is a patch, we assume where the ladder leg went through the wall. The light to the right doesn't work; we assume they tore out the electrical at some point. In the pool house where the two pool light lines come up, one is capped off, we assume that one because we also can't find the junction box anywhere around the pool. So the thought was to just cover up that light with the bench and leave the skimmer as-is, above the bench seat.

You can't see the slope very well, but here's an approximate profile of the shallow end walls based on some measurements I took a while back:

Pool Profile.JPG

I couldn't really tell when taking the measurements, didn't notice until we first got in this weekend, but at the top of the slope, where it transitions to SS, there's actually a small ledge there; it goes out maybe 2 inches before it starts to slope down.

What I'm picturing is something like this:

Custom-Steel-Bench-Step-Large.jpg
 
Your picture of the proposed is exactly like what we have except that our bench also returns on the side opposite the stairs. You can see it via the link in my signature.

Thank you for the excellent pictures and description above. Hopefully that will get the juices flowing on the board.
 
I've seen the Blue Torrent stairs on Amazon, the problem with any of those manufactured stairs are that the back goes straight down; with the floor sloop I don't think they'll work, pretty sure the base of it needs to sit flat on the floor of the pool.
 
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