Set on a chair, measure from the chair seat top to your ankles or what ever you want for soaking your feet after you're done building it and enjoy your handy work. I have a canoe in our pond and the support joists are just low enough the canoe sides won't tip and get caught under them.
Blain, I love your dock! And I know what you mean when you say its a battle to raise one over water, one of my poles sunk and I had to do the same thing. A come-along worked fine but was a hassle for sure. Not to take away from the other docks they're all great. Mine is made from a recycled deck and 1-1/2" Galvanized poles with screw augers on the bottom, since I was installing it in an existing pond I came up with this first. I also did mine during the winter at pool level and augered holes in the ice for my poles. Another person told me they helped someone do this on the ice but used a come-along to drive the pilings by making a "T" anchor that went below the ice that they could hook one end of the come-along to while the other was attached to the top of the piling. I didn't think of it or I may have tried that method, they told me it worked real slick. One more thing, the end of my dock is somewhat wobbly due to the small poles, I will probably try the pile driving method used by a friend this winter to sturdy my dock. These end two poles, however are in about 9-10 feet of water, they were 10' poles with 3' extensions and came to rest about 18-24" out of the water. I'll try to get a couple pictures to show but it doesn't look as good as the others posted here, however, I only have about $40 invested and it supported 4 adults, 6 kids, and one yellow lab last weekend
FH
