HRSDENNIS,

No, the sand is definitely coming from the sandbags used to weigh drop the stairs. Unfortunatley, I removed the sand from its original bag and put it into the giant ziplock bags that came with the stairs. If I'd just put the original packaged sand into the bags, I probably wouldnt have the problem with sand I'm having now. Apparently, when I sunk the bags, an airbubble caused one of the bags to open and spill some, so every time your;re on the stairs, it causes a little more sand to eek out.