Solution for detached pool stairs

[Guillaume]

Hi everyone,

When I bought the house with the above ground pool, the stairs were detached and staying in place thanks to a large weight lifting round weight. It wasn't a terribly bad solution, except the weight was wrapped in some sort of blue duct tape, which is now, 2 years later, falling apart. There are bits of plastic coming in the skimmer, and the weight itself is rusting. Without the weight on, the stairs immediately float to the surface.

As you can see on the picture, a quart of the pool has a nice wooden deck. One can see that at some point, there was some attachment for stairs. However, the stairs themselves don't show any sign of attachment.

We're thinking of several solutions:
1. Replace the stairs altogether, but it is expensive (over $300 for good ones) and I'm still not sure how to attach them to the deck
2. Try to attach the stair somehow to the deck
3. Find a better solution for a weight that wouldn't rust in the water.
4. Reuse the current weight. We're thinking maybe cleaning it, and covering it in polyurethane paint, which would be like a plastic coating. Or some other type of plastic coating.

What would you guys do?
What do you think of the polyurethane fix?

Thanks!
G.

 

[dsmith99]

Fill some bleach jugs with pea gravel and hang them from the underside of the stairs. You could also get some 3-4" PVC, cap one end and fill with concrete, then cap the other end and tie these to the sides of the stairs with heavy duty zip ties.

Pretty much any hollow steps are going to try and float. My confer steps said to add 20# of sand to each side which pretty much filled them. While it helps they still try to float. The metal weight is definitely something you should get out of the pool. Unlikely you are going to get it sealed well enough to stop rusting.

Do you have enough chlorine in that water, it's not looking so good. You should definitely slam before things get worse.

 

[Casey]

My steps sit like that. I use bleach jugs under the steps with 2 on the sides for weight. To attach the steps to the pool, I have used bungie cords around the handle, fed through the slats of the steps and attached to the underside of the top rail. It has worked for a few years and makes moving the steps so easy.

 

[JEC11718]

They sell 5lb weighs for scuba diving that are fully encased in vinyl.

 

[mariane]

We have those exact same steps for our AGP. They originally came with two pieces with holes to feed the rails into and then the other end would have to be screwed to the deck. We have not used those pieces since we have a stone deck and I did not like the look.
We weigh down our stairs with 5 large pvc pipes, each filled with ~ 30 lbs of sand and glued the caps on. Then we ziptie the weights together and secure them under the stairs. I can still slightly move the steps to brush under them if need be. For the winter storage, we take out the stairs and use the weights to hold down the winter cover on the deck. If you would like a pic, I could take one tomorrow since it is already dark.
Hope this helps.

 

[Guillaume]

Hi all, thank you for all the answers and tips!

We've quickly followed the tip to use bleach jugs filled with gravel. They're attached underneath the stairs with plastic "heavy duty" zip ties. This is awesome, they're invisible, and I can cut the zip ties to take the stairs out for winter.
I didn't attach the stairs to the deck, so I can move them to brush the pool behind them. The stairs have just the right weight to not move too much but can still be pushed around easily.

Since I didn't have enough jugs yet, we've also used some small buckets with a cap. Those are also attached with zip ties, but they're not invisible, so that's temporary.

I like the idea of the PVC pipes filled with sand, rather than concrete. Maybe we'll do that too.

Thanks so much! My ugly rusty weight is now gone!

Best,
Guillaume

 

[mariane]

Sorry I forgot these but so you can see what we did. Hope this helps.

- - - Updated - - -

After I took these, I noticed sand or dead algae under the steps. Maybe leaving a little more space around the pvc would allow that to circulate better.