A pool ladder sits out in the open all season, and St. Louis hail reaches it the same way it reaches the grill lid and the patio table. The rails are usually coated metal, the treads are plastic or coated steel, and the bolts that hold the whole thing to the deck or the coping get little attention from anyone who did not have to replace them. If a storm came through your yard, the ladder deserves a few minutes of photos before the pool closes for the season and the cover goes on.
Nothing about this page requires a special tool. You need a phone, a coin or a tape measure for scale, and a dry afternoon. Walk the ladder from the bottom up, photograph each part in order, and write the storm date beside the set. That dated file is what separates a repair you can prove from a repair you have to explain from memory.
Storm and hail
Hail on a metal ladder usually shows as a round dent with a ring of chipped or lifted coating around its edge. A shallow dish with no broken finish is a cosmetic mark that may never matter. A dent where the coating cracked, flaked, or lifted in a small ring is different, because bare metal begins to corrode once it sits through a few wet weeks and a St. Louis freeze-thaw cycle. Photograph each dent twice: once straight on with the scale object beside it, and once from a low angle with the sun behind you, so the shadow shows how deep the dimple sits.
Check the handrails where they meet the deck, because that is where a ladder takes the most load in a storm and where a bent fitting or a loose flange is most likely to show. Look for a kink, a cracked weld, a flange that has pulled away from the deck, or a bolt that has backed out. Run a hand along each rail slowly. A kink the eye misses often shows under the fingers, and a finger can also tell you whether a rail rattles when you lift the ladder lightly by one side.
The treads need their own look. Plastic treads can crack along a mold line, and the crack often shows as a thin white stress line when the tread is flexed by hand. Coated steel treads can chip down to bright metal, which will rust in the next season if it is left alone. Photograph every tread you can reach from the deck, and note on a sheet which ones you could not check safely. A tread you cannot see is still a tread to write down.
Do not climb the ladder to inspect the top rail while the deck is wet from the storm or from a hose. Wet decking and wet treads together are a common way people fall. Wait for the surface to dry, then go up one step at a time with a second person nearby, or check the upper section from the ground with a telephoto view if the angle allows it. A photo taken from the ground is still a useful photo.
Hail season in St. Louis runs from spring into early summer, and some storms arrive later in the year when the pool is already in use. A ladder hit in June can look fine until the first cold snap, when a coating crack that had been sealed by warm weather starts to open. That is why the second set of photos, taken after the first hard freeze, matters as much as the first set. Compare them side by side. Any new crack, lifted edge, or loose fitting between the two sets belongs in the file with its date.
What it costs
A ladder is usually a small repair or the replacement of one part, not a whole-project decision. A single tread or a pair of anchor bolts is often a modest purchase, and a bent rail section may be a replacement piece rather than a full ladder. A whole ladder can cost more than the repair is worth when the coating is failing across the body and not just at one dent. Because the answer depends on the model, get the model number from the label on the ladder or from the manufacturer before you ask for a price. A part quoted without a model number is only a guess.
Ask whoever services the pool to write down the cost of each damaged part on its own line, with the photo number beside it. A single lump figure for the whole ladder makes it hard to see which part is causing the expense, and it makes it hard to decide whether to repair one tread now and the rail next spring. Separate lines let you choose the order of the work.
This page is about what to photograph and what to ask, not a bid for the ladder. If the ladder sits close to your roof edge or your eave, the same photo habit applies to the gutter and fascia above it, and those photos belong in the same dated folder. The roof side of a storm file is covered on the storm and hail pages of this site, and the two folders should match on dates.
What to ask
Ask the pool service or the ladder supplier three things before you order anything. First, ask whether the rails are powder coated or painted, because the answer decides whether a chipped spot can be touched up on site or whether the rail has to be replaced. Second, ask whether the ladder can be lifted off the deck for a shop repair, or whether the anchors are set into concrete or the coping so that the ladder has to stay in place. Third, ask for the lead time on replacement treads. A tread that arrives after the first freeze can leave the ladder out of service for the rest of the winter, and that is worth knowing before the pool closes.
Ask for each part's model number in writing, and ask whether the part is a current stock item or a special order. Ask how the pool company will handle a tread that breaks after the work is done, and whether that is covered in the same written note as the repair. These questions take a few minutes and prevent most of the arguments that come later about what was replaced and when.
Ask, too, what gets written down on the day. A dated note with one photo for each damaged part is useful whatever happens next. It shows what was seen, where it was, and what the condition looked like before anyone touched it. Keep the note with the rest of your storm photos and the dated file for the house.
If you want a second set of eyes on the storm damage to the house, the roof, or the yard around the pool, Keys Roofing can be reached at (314) 220-2333. The office can talk through what to photograph, what a written scope with photos and measurements looks like, and how the paperwork is set up. Keys documents what it sees and puts that record in your hands. Your dealings with your own insurer, and any decisions about them, stay with you.
Before winter, take the cover off on a dry day and photograph the ladder again from the same spots as the first set. Check the coating at each dent, the fittings at the deck, and the treads from the top down. Then, after the first hard freeze, look once more at the same places. If a crack opened, a coating lifted, or a bolt loosened over the cold months, the two sets of dated photos will show the change instead of leaving it to memory in the spring.