well, its been almost a year since i last posted but i have a pond!!!! well almost. the damn is almost completed and we'll be cleaning out around the shore soon.
my question regards a retaining/sea wall around a large oak i saved at the pond shore. i need to build out into the water a "sea wall" to keep water away from the roots and have a nice area to sit at water edge. i need help on deciding a cheap, easily constructed, long lasting wall that will be sumerged about 40" into the water. salt water treated lumber is what i'm leaning to but would be open to other ideas. is there a web site that someone could get a generic engineered view of such a wall.
any help would be appriciated, i'll have water sometime this year if we ever get rain!

Congratulation on your pond. Glad you came back!

rcahow,
I am contemplating a similar wall structure and looked into concrete pipe, I have it here from 4" to 48" in diameter with assorted lengths. I was going to stand them on end side by side and fill some with concrete and the others with gravel. Then top the wall off with a concrete cap. Here concrete is much cheaper than woood.

You might consider stacking bags of Quikcrete in a stairstep fashion and then driving rebar through to lock them together. You could make pretty much any shape you want and it would be very easy to construct. Not sure how the inital cost would compare to wood, but it would never rot.

i just bought 80lb bags of quikcrete at menards for something like 3.98 a bag but you can getem for about 3.50 on sale i was some 60lb bags for 2.00$ but they didnt look in too good condition

I used railroad ties. Keep in mind what ever method you decide upon that the water will migrate into the soil behind the wall there fore you need and extra 5 to 6 foot of distance from the tree to account for this if you're trying to keep the roots dry. Here is a link of our wall after it was built.
http://www.rockytoppers.com/the_pond.htm

thanks guys for your quick reply. concrete bags would be quick to build, but i think rather expensive for the amount to shore line needed to be held back. i'm afaid of using railroad ties because a lot of them will be sumerged. i looked at rockytopper's wall and it looked to be above water line. again if anyone knows of a web site for building walls and docks and piers and etc, i would greatly appriciate the info.

rcahow the pond was dry in the above link that's how I got the chance to build the wall. My retaining wall is completed submergered except for top row. It is on the right side of the deck in this pic.

If you buy quality ties they are going to far out last you, even in water. This type of lumber is used on many ocean pears, retaining walls on golf course ponds, and sea walls. If I could have afforded a rock or solid concrete wall I would have but not in my budget. The only hard part of the railroad tie wall is getting the bottom row level to start. There also very heavy to handle you'll need a friend or 2 to help. I did most of mine alone but I'm a very large fellow.

Have any of you heard of rc mercer on the radio? He would always say, "Well how big of a boy are you?" The core has used the quickcrtete around Lake Grapevine pretty extensivly and it looks good. Ray Scott has a formula of putting liquid fertilizer on it after it hardens to make it look more natural and to help start moss on it. I heard him talking about it at the convention but I don't remember exactly how it went.

...t'aint no moss gonna grow on dis big boy