Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Wood dock building and being stubborn

I was down at the pond by myself trying to get a dock started today. I then found out how darned hard it is to attach a 4x4 to a footer with bracket under 4 feet of water with nothing to hold on to. After the wood has been sitting out in the sun for a few weeks it gets rather buoyant. It may have been entertaining if it was someone else, so a lot of decorative language skills were exercised. I managed though.

I am determined not to drain the pond to finish the dock and use the special wood I purchased last fall for it. Somehow I don't think I am going to get the posts in that are under 14 feet of water so half the dock may be a floater.

The bottom of the pond has zero grip being all clay, and offers no support at all except for the footers I planted when the pond was empty. I found the solution though: cheap snowshoes. They worked great for not damaging the bottom and letting me walk around. It stirred up a lot of mud though, but with those snowshoes I barely touched the surface.

Thought I would share the snowshoe trick, but I would highly recommend building the dock when the pond is empty. Mine just filled too fast on me, I didn't stand a chance. Now I get to entertain my wife and son with my stubbornness. Otherwise use metal pipes pounded into the bottom if possible. I could not do that due to too many large stones embedded in the clay.

-Mark

For the next go around have your wife and son snap some photos so we can even better visualize....

Snowshoes? Never seen them.

Resurrect this thread! Since the pond is down 7 inches after almost no rain in 5 weeks and a lot of heat, I was able to attach another 6' of dock out into deep water! I used a 12' piece of lumber attached to the older part of the dock as a lever, and my wife guided the posts under water with it so I could screw them down to the footers under water!

Took some work, but finally have the dock where I want it. Just have to get the decking on, but the hard stuff is out of the way.

PICTURES!!!!!!!

Congrats! We hope to have a dock started and finished next week!

Having a little argument with Google+ and Picasa this morning. Unfortunately no construction pics, which are hard to do when you have flippers in the air running nuts over screws in 5'+ of water.

https://picasaweb.google.com/101078073330424712743/PondProject?authuser=0&feat=directlink

You can see how nice of a swimming pond it has turned into! Just worried about the curly-leaved pond weed at the other end. It loves my pond, and does not have expected warm-water die off. Growing like crazy.

Have the same issue with my pond. I took and put my post in a five gallon bucket and poured in the quick crete. That solved my floatation issue with the post. The first couple I tried to put in in deep water without the concrete on the bottom of the post probably would have won me some cash on Americas funniest home videos despite the constant bleeping of editing out the "decorative language skills".

Squid, I had the same issue this year with both of my ponds - the curly leaf was as heavy as I've ever seen it, but it has all died off and both ponds are enjoying the most balanced vegetation growth they've had in my three years of owning them. Wish I could say I actually had something to do with it!

Well, curly leafed pond weed in my pond to stay. Been working at it and working at it to keep it from spreading, but apparently a mountain of seeds came along with the lily. I can see on the pond bottom where I had dragged the lily into place and it left a trail of seeds behind.

The lily is so awesome there is NO way I am killing it to get rid of the pond weed which seems to be doing a great job of clearing water.

Oh and finished the dock off with decking, and finished a ladder for the floating dock last night. If a bomb went off in the pond, all would be destroyed except for the ladder!

Pics soon, have a kid party at the pond tomorrow!

I'm surprised your pond weed is sticking around so long. It seems to normally have a fairly quick life cycle. It seems to be validating the saying we we so often use here, "it all depends!" One good thing about it is that it should be using a lot of nutrients that would otherwise convert into other far less desireable stuff. It's a bear on fishing, though.

Congrats on getting the other projects knocked out. Looking forward to the pics!

My alkalinity/hardness is VERY high, I wonder if that has something to do with it. The water temp has been hovering between 80 and 90 as the pond is blasted by full sun. I actually am getting salt scale on objects in the pond like rope and thermometer plastic. I am accounting this to the limestone dust/clay liner reacting with anything and becoming soluble/converting to salts.

Whatever the case, I thought that would be counter-productive, but it seems to suit pond life just fine.

I know chara thrives in hard water conditions, but have never heard about whether the curly leaf has a particular affinity for a particular pH level. Interesting. Maybe one of the plant experts can opine on the issue.

Yeah, the Chara appeared out of nowhere as well. Well, maybe the arse of a goose. Same with the cattails.

The arse of a goose, or a few hundred of 'em, has been the bane of many a member of this forum!

The stairs for the floating dock. They hinge up when the dock is to be dragged out for the winter:


Finished dock and floating dock plus stairs (pointing wrong way)


In use!

Dude, that looks awesome! Beautiful place and great setup!

That does look like fun times indeed!!!

Thanks, soooo much better than some NY regulated swimming pool. The restrictions on swimming pools due to lawsuits have gotten quite silly. NO restrictions on a pond, which IMHO is much more dangerous.