Does anyone know of a place where I can get/buy plans for building a floating dock addition?

Thanks

Bill,

I think there is a company advertised on this site under products or something.

I have a Menards near me that sells floating sections in season. I think they are expensive so I'm going to build one using billets of bluefoam used by many for floating docks.(I can order them here in Indiana that are 8 feet long)with a frame of lumber over it. All it takes is 2 by sixes for the frame and decking size 1 by 6's's on top. Put together by predrilling and deck screws. Alternate the spaceing of the frame to slide one section into the other before bolting.

I already have a 70 foot permanent pier I put in in my warmwater pond put in on the ice by cutting holes and driving galvanized posts from Menards into the bottom which are attached to the pier by sleeves which Menards also sells. We then propped up the pier as high as we wanted on the ice before tightening the sleeves.

But for my trout pond which is only 1/10th acre, I want something I can remove when it is time to harvest by hook and line in the fall so I am going with the blue foam.

See: http://www.ligtel.com/~jjbaird/bairdfish2.htm

I hope this helps.

I did see a book at a Menards or Lowes that was on just building piers of all types.

... On the note of blue foam or similar... does anybody have any calculations on how much weight a given amount of foam will float? If not perhaps I will get myself a chunk of it and play in the bathtub with some weights...

Pottsy,

I don't know but I will find out. I need to know too. I'll find out how much is used customarily to float a particular width etc pier.

I first found out about this foam from a taxidermy supplier in Idaho. I was told it worked great to carve fish bodies for taxidermy, and he said it was commonly used for floating piers in his area.

I may have my pieces shrink wrapped for extra protection or breakdown, even though the billets will be under the pier.

Remember I don't believe this is the regular construction foam. It's about 8 feet long and I believe it was about 2 feet thick or more (I don't have any right now as I now use a softer foam for carving fish bodies).

Thanks Cecil

2 feet thick eh? Hmmm... wonder how I will find that.. thickest I can find is 6" and that is construction insulation foam. It may well be a good idea to cover it with something, I have seen regular styrofoam after a few years in the sun/water and it doesn't look very healthy.

The few years that I have been using foam in a pond setting has been more work than it's worth. Muskrats seem to chew on it for fun, and build tunnels in it here in Wisconsin. Chasing the pieces around when you move the dock isn't fun. We tried some empty 55 gallon plastic drums or smaller 35 gallon ones. I would think that a few phone calls could find some cheap or free. They could be strapped in, and a frame could be built around them.
Robert B

Bob,

I thought of the barrels too. I may do some calling. You may have a point.

1morecast: The use of empty 45 gallons plastic drums are excellent for floating docks because of their appropriate length and width. In my application I created 4' width docks with 16' lengths and framed the 2 drums near each end's width. The drums were framed into the width of the 4' and approx 4' in from each end for each dock section, resulting in the docks being equally spaced and balanced throughout the floating dock sections. The docks were joined together with galvanized brackets and screwed into each side joist of the adjoining docks for stability. If you were for example making an 12' X 12' platform you could build 4 framed in areas near the four corners. Use 2 X 6" or 2 X 8" for the joists and framing structure. When the dock is floated the top of the drums will rest on the docks decking for a short height distance above the surface water level. If you require more height of the dock above the water you could frame each drum so it will sit higher in the water. I hope this helps with the many variable possible. Tip- seal each drum opening with water friendly caulking and be careful in the chemicals that were stored in each drum before your use.

Rowly

Rowly,

Just to check if I am reading correctly. You are using 2 - 45 gallon drums for each section of dock? One on each end mounted sideways? Are the sections stable even when not connected together? How far out of the water would you say the dock sits? Any idea how much weight it can carry?

Lots of questions. : )

Thank you.
Chris

Hi guys, looks like I can finally contribute to this board instead of just reaping the benefits of your collective wisdom!
I built a floating dock last year and it's working great. I used $5.00 drums from the local Pepsi and Coca-Cola bottling plant. They have lots of 'em, with tops, screw caps that are water tight and in excellent shape. Can't see why they don't re-use them. Probably costs too much to clean, etc?
Anyway, I built 2 docks that I can connect together. I couldn't find the exact plans tonight, but each is approx. 7' wide x 16' long. I used 2x10 inside stringers and 2x12 on the outside frame - all Press. Treated lumber and galvanized connectors on the ends from Overtons.com . The 7' odd width is based on the lowest cost lumber I could buy at the time without making it too narrow. That stuff's EXPENSIVE!! I used 8 barrels per section. 3 on each end and 2 in the middle, mounted length-wise. May be overkill, but I had no idea how much each would hold and I wanted a floating dock, not a sunken reef! Someone told me that each drum would support the weight of the water it displaced or 450-500 pounds. Heck, I ain't no Engineer, so I used that as a rule of thumb. One thing I did on the 2nd dock was to put waterproof glue around the screw cap threads. I didn't on the first dock's drums and I have one that leaks.
It floats about 1/2 drum out of the water.

I spaced the 2x10 lumber stringers about 2' apart, which fit the drums exactly, allowing me to wedge them in snug, but not too tight. I then used thin strips of galv. metal strapping to secure each drum to the frame. Used 2x6 decking on top.
It was a real hoot building this thing in my basement since I live about 30 miles from the pond and I have no electricity there yet. I built it and then disassembled it to cart it to the pond. Then reassembled it onsite with a friend. The first one took all day to put together onsite. The second one about 2 hours by myself. I have some good photo's if someone can tell me how to post 'em here or I can email them to anyone who's interested.

It works great, hold 4 adults and several kids without much tipping. The best thing is I can move it to any spot on the lake or just float free, by attaching a rope. I used it to move about 20 Christmas trees out about 30 feet from shore - worked great.
I'll be glad to provide more detail if desired.
Dave

Dave, I have thought about using fiberglass barrels but am concerned about sun damage. Do you or anyone else know about the life expectancy?

Good question Dave - I really hadn't considered it. Only about 5-6 inches of the drum are exposed. Also, I don't think these are fiberglass, but rather a very thick plastic or poly-something.

I've considered putting a few gallons of water in each drum to give it some stability and lower it in the water a bit. That would help reduce sun exposure too.

I'll email you a photo so you can see it.
Dave

Pottsy, to answer your questions, yes the drums were turn side ways on the 4' wide dock near each dock end, each section is quite stable as one section but much more when secured together as one larger unit. If you need more stability on one section of dock you could add more drums or increase your width and add more drums to that width. The dock floats approx. 18" above water level and with 4-6 adults getting in and out of various water crafts it may dispers some 4-6" more? These drums work well and the sky is the limit on any design wanted.

Rowly

Hey guys, this is good info. I might start looking around for barrels unless I find some of this foam Cecil has mentioned. As Dave said about this dock I could always add water to the drums if it floated too high.. better safe then sorry with the amount of drums.

Pottsy,
You may want to go ahead and get some extra drums. Around here, all of the little league parks snatch 'em up and cut off the tops for trash cans. The baseball season's not far away!
Here, they're only $5.00 each.
Good luck.
Dave

FYI, here are plans for a large floating dock:

http://www.canadianfishing.com/dock/index.htm

Pottsy, check with your local chemical suppliers they will have them or know who may. In London, the cost is between $10-$15 apiece for black 45 gallon drums.

Rowly

Jason, I tried to pull up the dock plans but the link didn't work.

Hey Dave, the link is working for me... did you try the old cut and paste method? (Copy the link and paste into the browser address bar)

The biggest revelation for me in that plan is the use of plywood... if treated I don't see why it wouldn't work... the time and money as well as effort it would save seems worth trying! (I spoke to my father about this and he mentioned 'Marine' grade plywood as the plywood of choice... not sure though if this is readily available or how much it costs)

Excellent find Jason.

Pottsy, The cut and paste worked. Thanks. That is one of the most informative, well done, web sites I've seen.

The plans are nice and it looks very simple to build. In July I'm going to build one similar with 45 gal. drums rather than foam billets. If someone builds one this spring, I will be very interested to hear how they like the plywood deck vs. 2x6 or 1x6 decking. Please keep me posted.
JN

You all need to be real careful using used chemical drums. Some pretty nasty chemicals are sold in them and it is almost impossible to remove all residue without a very professional cleaning setup. You don't want to try this youself unless you are absolutely certain what was in the drum. Some chemicals react very badly with water! I was in the business and witnessed enough "accidents" and mixups to cause me to want to caution you all to be more careful about this then you might be inclined to be.

Jim,

I found some free barrels labled "Rotenone." There is some residue left but not much. Do you think they could affect the fish if I use them for floatation? LOL

Sorry, couldn't resist poking fun.

Cecil:
Taken with a chuckle! On the serious side, many, if not most, chemical drums are disposed of because they can't be cleaned or the cost of disposing of the waste is too high. If it were me, I would only use drums with a known history. Out west here we get drums that were used once to transport Olives from Europe. I have several that I have been using for years and still can smell the Olives. If you were to wind up with a drum that had contained something like Bromine, and only a few ounces in a pond could be quite bad. The human nose can detect Bromine down to incredible low doses - smells like shoe polish and aside from the possible toxic effect, LMB should not taste like your loafers!

I'm also looking to build a floating Dock this spring. I've had good luck picking up 55 gal plastic drums from the local car wash. They get the soap in the drums and leave them for garbage pickup. I' planning to fill them with 2 part liguid marine foam in case of water leakage.

Jimmy, I also have a dock using plastic drums. Could you give some more detail about the marine foam you mentioned? Brand? Mixing?

Great idea. I'm just using hollow drums and I've got one with a leaking seal. I'm sure the foam would help.

Thanks.
Dave

Another way for an easy floating dock is an old pontoon boat that needs some work.I did this for my dock and it works great.

Dave, It's called a closed cell foam, to minimalize the absorbion of water.The prices didn't seem out of line either.

2 part foam[/URL]

OK that link didn't work to well, try copy and paste
http://www.shopmaninc.com/foam.html

Thanks, Jimmy. I'm not a real techie with regard to this kind of thing, so it's not clear how much foam it will take per drum (2ft diameter, 4 ft tall). Do you have an estimate?
Thanks for the help,
Dave

I found this link to the DOW site containing plans for dock construction using their styrofoam billets. FYI.

http://www.dow.com/webapps/lit/litorder.asp?objid=09002f1380039032&filepath=/noreg

Dave Thanks for the link, but I couldn't open the file. Does anyone know what program opens an asp file? I figure that a barrel needs about 12 cubic feet of foam. Also Dave, how big is your dock and how many barrels did you use? How stable is it with people on it? Trying to figure how many square feet of dock to the barrel.

JImmy, I'm using a software product called "Conversions Plus" that opens everything but AOL files. I got to the web site.It is a 16 page set of instructions on how to build the dock. The billets are being sold by Dow Chemical. They evidently put up the web site to help sell the Styrofoam. The product is called Styrofoam BB. For information they listed the following numbers: U.S. 1-800-441-4369; Canada 1-800-363-3500.

I printed out the 16 pages from DOW and really appreciate the tip on website location!

Nice looking dock, but I believe I will go with on a 3 feet wide dock vs. 6 feet, so I'm hoping I can get by with only one billet per 10 foot section. Anyone know if that will work? As it would be half the width reducing the weight load, I'm assuming it should. I have another dock that is permanent, and 3 feet wide is plenty.

I also believe the deck brace in the center would not be necessary with only a three feet wide dock, and don't believe the skirting on the bottom and the corner posts are necessary. The decking should hold the frame together just fine. Of course, I would still adhere the billets with the bottom skids and use three cross ties per 10 foot section. IMHO there is just too much lumber used on the plans on website, and using less lumber will reduce both weight and cost.

Jimmy:

Active Server Pages
(asp)

A Microsoft specification for dynamic web pages created using Visual Basic or Jscript (engines for Perl and REXX are also available). Pages written to this specification carry the extension .ASP and are similar to CGI scripts which generate code on the fly. ASP pages can combine HTML, scripts, and ActiveX server components.

I bet that doesn't help you at all.

In this case you are likely missing the Adobe Acrobat reader plug-in. You will need to get yourself Acrobat reader.
Adobe Acrobat reader

Thanks Pottsy, Acrobat 5.0 did the trick. Once opened the Dow article did give me the information needed (a 45 gal drum has 440 lbs of bouyancy), now I can do calculations of how many drums I need depending on how big I make the dock. Right now I'm thinking of a 4' X 24' walkway out to a 16' X 16' floating dock. We'll see what the funds will allow come springtime!

Jimmy,
Regarding the size, number of drums, etc.. I have 2 sections, each 7 ft x 16 ft. At each end of a section, I used 3 drums, side by side. In the middle, I just put one on each side, lengthwise along the side. Each drum is 2 ft diameter x 4 ft tall. It's very stable, but will rock if a couple of people stand near the same corner, for example. I've had 4 adults and a couple of kids on the combined 2-piece, 32 ft long section. One thing that helps the stability is that it's linked together with galvanized pin hinges that I can remove if necessary. I just leave it connected and it's pretty stable for me. I haven't connected it permanently to the bank yet, so that would also make it more stable. I plan to do that in a way that allows me to pivot it left 0r right.
Hope that helps.
Dave

Good info Dave! That does help alot! You have me thinking that instead of a 16x16 swim platform, I should build two 8x16s. this would allow me to change things up (16x16 or 8x32) two smaller ones would also be much easier to handle.

Good idea Jimmy,
I hadn't thought about a 16x16. Another good configuration would be 2- 16x16's in a "T" or "L" shape. That would be VERY stable I'd bet.

This maybe a dumb notion, but I wonder if that canned "Great Stuff" insulating foam would work as flotation inside the drums. It may be more expensive than the other foam mentioned, but once it was in there, it wouldn't come out!

Start nailin'!
Dave

Dave, that's how my looking into the marine foam started.Thought about great stuff, then figured if I could by it in bulk I could get it cheaper.The Marine foam is pretty close only better than great stuff. US Composits had the 80 lb pak for $175, check out how much other places want for the same stuff (2lb density 10 gal unit) Eager Plastics wants $320, Mertons Fiberglass wants $267. I'm thinking I could fill 4 barrels per pak it comes to a little over $40 a barrel.

Just an update, I found a cheap way out for floatation of a dock. I located a food distribution place called Krynos, they have hundreds of plastic drums (happy to give them to you) They were used to transport olive from Greece, so there are no chemicals.These drums have a big screw on top instead of 2 small ones. Then instead of filling them with foam, I started stuffing them with 2 litre plastic bottles. Turns out you can fit 52 2litre and another 20 smaller water bottles inside a 45 gal drum. With all of these smaller closed air pockets there's no way a drum could sink.

Dave, if you read this could you send me the pictures you mentioned early in this thread. I'm drawing up plans and they could be a big help. THANX Jimmy

I called the number on the Dow brochure and found out that the closest distributor in Houston is Weyerhouser. I called them to get the price, but they said I would have to buy through one of their distributors, like Home Depot or Lowe's. Also, since they don't normally stock this item, I would have to buy the whole pallet of 18 pieces.
The nearest place that stocks this is in Louisiana. Does anyone know the price on these buoyancy billets? The barrels are looking better again.

http://www.hendersonmarine.com/HMS_Section%200102.htm

Many options for dock flotation, no prices yet.

OK, gentlemen,

here is a nice site with the same flotation options as the link above, but with prices. It looks like the flotation for the 12*8 dock in the Dow booklet can be had for less than $300 plus shipping from Florida.

http://www.dockbuilders.com/index.html

I built mine with the same floatation foam... 16x8 foot dock with four sections of the foam at $70 CAD per. Floats 2 inches below the bottom skirt with no load so the only bit in the water is the foam and the bottom runner. Each section of foam supports about 650 lbs... very stable as well.

In most public Lakes these days, during new construction, you are required to encase styrofoam with something such as polyethylene tubs. This stops the foam beads from coming slowly apart and dispersing into the environment. It's a good regulation and makes sense financially too if you look at the increase in lifetime of the structure and decreased repairs needed. Here is something of interest to all you guys. If you are looking for a good looking top deck material that is sturdy and will to my knowledge NEVER need maintenance or require expensive coatings etc. during install, then try to locate a wood from Brasil called "IPE" (pronounced E-pay). This wood is unreal in it's strength and can be used untreated on even a SALTWATER deck . It is of course a bit pricey but if you are building or repairing your dream dock then check it out. A few things to remember, The wood is so dense - if you accidentally kick it over the dock while building, that piece of lumber sinks right to the bottom. Also...it is in some ways more like working with metal than wood in the way it will dull drill bits and saw blades etc. Always predrill pilot hole with the best bits you can afford before bolting...forget about trying to screwgun in deck screws. If you spring for this material you should go ahead and use only stainless steel hardware for the decking at least. We should be growing this wood here in the U.S. It probably requires warm climate, but there are areas where we could surely do that. Added bonus ...I have seen the Ipe trees while in Brasil. They have beautiful pink ,purple,and yellow flowers that grow up in the tops of the trees. Really pretty.
Now then, for info about where to aquire durn near anything needed to build or repair a boat dock or marina call or e-mail the following co.
Atlantic-Meeco corp.
McAlester, Oklahoma.
1-800-marina1.
http://atlantic-meeco.com/
These folks are the worlds largest manufacturer of marinas - docks - etc.
No...I don't work for them.
Be cool -Dave

How do you attach the barrels to the dock? I am concerned about having the unit stay together when we pull it out in the winter. I would also like to rig wheels to support it in the winter on the ramp. Any suggestions?

Num1Pirate, I built collars for each of the barrels(kinda like what the pilgrims were locked up in the center of town in)and built the collars into the framework. I attached the barrels to the collars with .030 mil x 1/2 inch stainless banding, and when I pulled it out over this winter,I laid down 2 inch PVC piping for the barrels to slide up onto shore. I used the PVC to put the dock back in just last week, and it only took two men to slide a 16'x 8' very heavy section of dock back into the pond.

Jimmy,

How did you secure your dock. My pond is full and I want to put in a dock. Not sure if it will be floating or secured.

Tuzz, I secured the individual sections of dock to each other with marina hardware. As to securing it to shore, I plan on pouring a concrete footing for the end of the walkway to sit on and get pinned to, but for right now I thru bolted two large eye hooks to the end and ponded rebar thru the eye hooks and bent the rebar over to not have a tripping hazard.

I would like to pound or pour footings in the water and have either a permanent or floating dock attached to those footings. I'm sorry I did not do it before the pond filled last year. It filled so fast and we were so excited about it filling that I just never thought how much easier it would have been to do it before the water came in. Oh well ..... live and learn.