Jif Marine Retractable Floating Dock Lift Ladder - 3 Steps - 750 lbs - Aluminum - 2" Deep Step

Video Transcript for Review of Jif Marine Dock Accessories - Retractable Dock Ladder - JIF89FR

Ellen: Hey, everybody. I'm Ellen here at etrailer.com, and we're going to be taking a quick look at the JIF Marine retractable dock steps. These are going to be for a floating dock, and it allows you to lift the steps up and out of the water. And that helps to keep them free of any kind of barnacles, seaweed, algae, anything that might kind of build up if they're sitting in the water all the time. They are made out of a completely aluminum construction, so there's no worries about rust or corrosion. But anything that stays in the water tends to get a little bit mucky, so being able to bring it out is a nice thing.I'm going to go over some measurements with you to make sure that you can find the one that's going to fit best for you.

There are three different sizes that you can find here at etrailer.com. They're going to be the same in every respect. The only difference is the number of steps and therefore how far they're going to go into the water or go down from your dock. So I'll give you some measurements to make sure you can figure that out.The thing I like about it, again, is that it is a completely aluminum construction. You do have to pick up your own hardware to mount it.

That is one thing to consider, so just keep that in mind. But as far as how to operate these steps, it's pretty simple. It's got a double run design, so if I lift it up a little bit, you can see this kind of little lip, and then this one down here, that's going to be what holds the step in place. Now, the cables are kind of a secondary backup. So if you happen to lose your grip on it and it falls, you should have a knot tied on the end of those cables, going into the handles, to hold it in place, so it's not going to sink all the way to the bottom of the lake or ocean or wherever you have this floating.

There's also a couple of tabs to kind of help keep it and guide it in place as well.So whenever you want to bring it up, just going to bring it up until it rests in one of those slots. And there's a little tab at the bottom here to keep it from going too high, and that's what was kind of fighting me, just because of the angle that I was at trying to use this. So pretty straightforward as far as how to operate it. It's nothing really that complicated. Now, as far as measurements, I actually have a lot of them, going from the dock surface, to kind of give you an idea of how much length you're going to get out of this.

So we'll go over those. I know it's a lot of numbers.But for the different step sizes, this is the three step that we have here. So if I put this down again, going from our dock height to the top of this bottom-most rung of the ladder, that gives us 25 inches, and then each additional step gives you 12 more inches. There's 12 inches between each of those rungs. So for the four step you get 37, for the five step, you get 49. So if you know how much distance, roughly, is between your deck and the water, you want to have a little bit of length going down into the water, just so that somebody is not having to lift their leg all the way up and out, but you can kind of choose it from there.As far as the other measurements, our handle height is about 21 inches. The depth or the distance going from, again, the corner of the dock to the back of the handles, that's about 12 inches. The inner width of the space in between those handles, that's about 17, and going on the outside edge, that's about 21. As far as how far it goes into the water at all times, it does have a piece that comes down that you can't really avoid that going into the water, and that comes down about 15, 16 inches. You can remove the bolt here, if you really want to keep it out of the water, and then there'd only be a little inch, maybe, sticking out from the dock. But that is some hardware that's not exactly quick to remove. And it's just a nut and bolt, so it's not that bad. So if you really want to make sure that you don't have anything hanging out in the water, that is an option for you.As far as the step depth, it's two inches. There is also a four inch version available here at etrailer.com. Those are all different part numbers, but you can find that if you want something a little bit deeper. As far as the weight carrying capacity or the weight load that this can handle, it's about 750 pounds, so it should be good for just about anybody that might be getting in and out of the water. And that's pretty much all there is to it for our look at the retractable dock steps. I hope this helped in deciding if this is the right one for you and, if so, which size you need. Our goal is always to get you the information you need, to get the right choice the first time. So again, I hope this helped. I'm Ellen with etrailer.com. Thanks for watching.