Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Dock building with pond full.

Header says it all. I cant seem to find any info on dock building on a full pond. Anything that points me in the right direction would be a big help.

http://www.ezdocktexas.com/gallery2.shtml
Do a search for floating docks.
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Thanks for the link, those look easy but I was kinda looking for a traditional post type structure.

Sgt911,

I took a look at that a while back. Seems I found a guy to do it that made boat houses on the local public lake for a living. For the amount of $ he was asking to drive the posts it would have cost a mint to build the pier. Luckily we hit a drought and I didnt have to worry about water.

Seems like if you had a stable boat, you could drive 4 inch (or so) drilling pipe yourself as long as you had a swamper or two to help out.

Can you drain the pond?

How about building the dock platform first using some barrels as floats and then pushing it into the water. Positioning it where wanted. Then depending on your desired post you could put some guides on the side of the platform. then put your support posts set in concrete with rebar sticking about a foot out of the bottom of a 5 gal. bucket.
Then you just drop your post using the guides and a sledge hammer and Presto you set it into the hopefully soft pond bottom!?

I just restocked and the pier will be in the deeper part of the pond. I can get my hands on some pipe and a life preserver.

Hey Sarge...
did ya see this one?

We built ours out of the pond. We measured the water depth and tried to make a WAG at how much it would settle, then we had a track hoe set it into the pond.

Have you looked at pipe docks from places like Great Northern Docks?

http://www.greatnortherndocks.com/

One idea, if you want to use steel pipe for up-rights, is to weld an old plow disks 3' or 4' (or however far down you want to pound it) above the bottom of the post, which lets the post go into the mud for stability, but keeps it from sinking any further than the disk heigth.

Good idea. I'm leaning toward the drill pipe, that way I can cut it off to the proper height after its in. Thank eveyrone for their input, I appreciate all the ideas, that's why the forum great.

I planned exactly where I wanted to drive the posts for my dock. After eighteen months of Texas drought, I *knew* I still had some time. Then it rained 6" the night after I talked with a guy to dig the holes. The pond basically filled after that. Okay, full pond. What were my options?

Floating dock... Looked at EZ-Dock (http://www.ezdocktexas.com) and a custom builder (http://www.ellisonmarine.com).

Pipe Dock... The water depth was ~4-5 deep, which could work for us.

My wife and I decided that the dock would be our next project, so we made basic plans and bought the necessary galvanized hardware from Merco Marine (www.mercomarine.com) and Great Northern Docks (www.greatnortherndocks.com). We decided to build a pipe dock instead of floating dock, mainly because of the water depth.

It only took a few weekends to build/deploy it.

Here's the final product.

Thats exactly what I want, Im about 30min north of you..that drought last year was brutal, but my pond stayed almost full...I lost about 10 huge post oaks to the drought..Also lost 2 giants to wind and one recently to lightining...that was amazing...just blew the tree to bits.

I have a small 4'x16' low profile cantilevered dock. The frame of the dock was made from 4"x4" angle iron and I welded some short pieces of pipe to the frame with an ID slightly larger than the OD of the posts. I drilled a 1" holes in the short pieces of pipe and welded nuts over the holes and screwed in bolts forming a sort of bull pipe clamp. I used steel pipe for the posts, longer than required and welded a plate to the bottom about 1' square and then welded a 2' long steel pin to the bottom of the plate then primed and painted everything. I dug two postholes and filled with concrete and installed anchor bolts. The posts were slid into the frame and the whole assebly was lifted into place. The post mounts were loosened allowing the posts to drop down and be pounded into the clay bottom until reaching the plate. I hooked a come-a-long to the top of the post and around the frame to adjust getting everything level then just simply tightened the bolts, layed on some 4x4 joists and screwed on the decking. Pretty easy and can be adjusted later if something settles but it hasn't yet. The total build time was about 12 man hours.

If you build a pipe dock with 1 1/2" galvanized pipe and 2x6 lumber, you must absolutely invest in a winch built specifically for the purpose of raising/lowering the dock on the pipe.

We bought most of our hardware from Merco Marine, but bought this tool from Great Northern Docks.



See: Great Northern Docks online catalog

One way you could build it would be to Jet in your pilings by taking a 2" gas water pump a connecting a 1" steel pipe on the discharge side of the pump. Stand your wood pilings up where you want them and use the pump to wash a hole for the post to go into. I have done it a couple of times here on Lake Livingston. It works well and is pretty easy to do. You may have to get wet doing it though.

I bought my dock from EZ Dock. It is awesome, stable, and will last forever. Very easy to install, augers attach to the pipes and you can easily set the poles with a standard pipe wrench.

I installed 12 sections of EZ dock and a jet ski platform in 4 hours with only their instruction sheet and my mother and little brother.

Best dock i have ever been on. Their jet ski and boat platforms are unbeleivably amazing.

No Im not an Ez dock employee, im just very satisfied with my dock.

How much $$$ per section with shipping and all ???

80"x 10' long sections are about $1200 each. 60"x 10" are about $900 each. 12' gangway is about $1000. Shipping was combined with another nearby order, $300 for everything. I saved %15 by ordering in the winter.

Here's what I was talking about, finally got a picture.