Weight down "wedding cake" ladder

[cheriberi]

Hi all,

We were attempting to set up the 'wedding cake" ladder in our above-ground pool today and found that the weight thingie with the sand in it started leaking sand! We pulled it all back out, vacuumed the sand up, and now don't know what to do. Do we need to buy a new ladder or is there something else we can put in the weight thing to hold the stairs down inside the pool that won't affect the pool water? Any suggestions?

Cheryl

[NWMNMom]

Run a search, there are a number of posts with suggestions on weighting down steps. Some include PVC pipes with caps on either end and concrete or sand inside, bleach jugs filled up with sand or concrete, plastic wrapped concrete, fittness weights, etc. Lots of good ideas. We use the bleach jugs for our steps.

[cheriberi]

How to you fasten the bleach jugs to the underside of the ladder? Would the plastic milk containers work? How many jugs do you use? Our ladder instructions say to use 50 lbs. of sand!

Cheryl

[cheriberi]

Also, our steps are not a flat piece that sits on the floor of the pool. It is actually like stairs, so it zig zags down to the pool and only the bottom step sits on the pool floor. It has a big plastic piece for sand that fits into two slots (one at top, one at bottom on the underside of the stairs).

So far my search only found 1 other post on this topic and mentions stones. Could we fill that thing with stones without affecting the water chemistry?

Cheryl

[NWMNMom]

Our Biltmore steps are designed that way as well - I think a lot of them are. If you put something like stones or concrete in there, you will want to wrap them in plastic. I would say that limestone and some others can effect chemistry - wrapping will also prevent damage to the liner if one is knocked loose and hits the floor.

[cheriberi]

Okay, so the white-ish stones that we have around the outside of the pool wrapped in plastic? Any suggestions on the plastic? Not sure what would not wear out if submersed for so long.

Cheryl

[NWMNMom]

A lot of people use plain old doubled garbage bags but the heavy poly plastic you can buy at Home Depot would work too.

[cheriberi]

Thank you so much for your help! I off to the nearest Home Depot!

Cheryl