PSC Ep. 57: How to remove a stuck inground pool ladder

I am closing my inground pool for the winter and I want to remove my ladder. I’ve loosened the anchor bolts, but I can’t get the ladder to come out. What am I doing wrong?

Some of the reasons you might want to remove your ladder, first, is going to be winter. If you want to install a safety cover or a winter cover to make sure it goes in nice and clean, that’s the main reason why people might want to remove the ladder. 

Second is, if you have plastic treads and you want to prevent water freezing and then cracking those treads, that’s going to be another good reason to remove the ladder.

All right, the problem this customer is having is they’ve loosened the bolts but there’s a wedge inside that anchor that needs to be pressed down. What you do is you take the half-inch socket, you loosen up the bolt a little bit maybe just a half-inch off the ground, and then you can take either the end of the socket and hammer it down, or a hammer, anything heavy will do, but you hammer that down and it loosens the wedge back up — pushes the wedge down, actually, and it loosens the ladder so you can wiggle it back and forth and then lift the ladder out.