Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction My Awesome Dock; design and pictures

So after MUCH review here, i bought lumber, and building supplies from dockbuilders.com I was hesitant to start without any plans, so I spent Many hours in the program SketchUp and was able to design my dock. I have taken a fair amount of info from the pictures that N8ly has posted. He also answered a lot of questions for me.

To start, here are the basic sketchUp pictures. I have the raw sketchUp files if ya'll want them.

Deck is 16 foot by 16 foot, and has 2x10x16 boards back to back as well as one below to make my side board 19 inches tall.










Here are a few construction pictures









Note how the 2x4 run at an angle to support the barrels in a on the flat edge of the board.

So here we are after some stain from dockbuilders. i used the dockbuilder woodRX. expensive stuff, but it seems to work well. took 5 gallons for the whole project, and i think i probably could put another 2.5 gallons on to finish it up.

Beautiful..

LAUNCH DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So this was VERY challenging. My wife called me Noah for about a month building this thing so far from the water.... but i needed flat ground and electricity, so the problem was unavoidable.

We used 10 friends, lots of red-neck engineering (actually had an engineer friend helping), a flat bed trailer, PVC to roll the deck on, and a front end loader to help push. Here are the pictures of the event!

Here is my swim across the pond to its final floating point

We need to get the walk-way down to the water. it was smaller, but still darn heavy!


note the T.H feeder on the right... oh yah





I had the whole thing connected to a winch on my old Toyota land-cruiser (another hobby)

Did you put sealer on the bungs on the barrels?

Final Picture. I still have to connect it with 2 large metal poles, but it is basically in place at this time!

This was a huge project, but I am super excited to have years of fun on this bad boy!

I will post pictures soon of my pole system that will allow for changing water depths.

Yes.

I opened each lid, put in liquid nails and then did layer on the outside of silicon.


Hope it works!

drp

Should work good.. My dock is basically the same.. Your gonna need quite a few post to keep it from swaying side to side.. Trust me I tried 2 and it was like walking on it drunk with a couple people moving and it swaying..

even with two post 5 foot down with 10 sacks of quickcrete per hole? was your walkway going out at least 1/3 the width of the dock? N8ly says that if it is at least 1/3 to 1/2 it will support it..

if not, i have room to put up more posts...


drp

Mine was only 12x16.. Here's a pic of it right before finishing.. I actually took the benches off the side and only kept them along the back they never got used and took up space..

I'd say if it's 1/2 it would I'm about a 1/3.. I'm actually planning on raising it and solid mounting it.. N8 is the pro I'm pretty sure I talked to him when I built this.. I just think anchorin it to just the 2 post it will still have a bit of sway.. The sway don't bother me but old peole hate it lol..

Bluegiller,

I saw your post on making those brackets. I almost attempted that, but i decided to buy the plastic ones instead. Your dock is sharp.




drp

Do you remove those in the winter????

nice work you have something to be proud of there.

but good lord that had to be heavy,makes me wonder how many burgers and beer where consumed after the job was finished

Dustin, I'm impressed. I would have torn the whole thing up trying to move it.

Dustin, where'd you source the brackets for the benches? That was a long project, but it looks great.

Incredible Dustin. Very nice. You're family's going to appreciate that hard work for years.

Nice Job, My neighbor put a trolling motor bracket on the one he built. The dock disconnects from the post and can be driven around in the lake.

My mistake is about 10x10 and only serves as an occasional fishing platform.
Not only do the bungs seem to finally crack and leak but people seem to prefer sitting at a table or in a smaller, more face to face grouping. And, unless they are fishing or swimming, adults will pick a shady spot every time. On the other hand, children... well, no sane person would try to predict what boys will do, but it'll probably be somewhere between totally unacceptable and just plain dumb. Girls seem to be much less adventurous.

The bench brackets are from amazon.com. that was as cheap as i could find. they are the 2x4basic brand. Individually, i don't know how strong they are, but it is very very secure spaced 16 inch centers.

FrozenGator, We don't freeze much here. if we ever get ice, it is very very thin. i don't plan on moving it much.

Thanks for the comments. I am very excited about having it.

The good thing about my dock is it is off the edge of a hill and has shade every evening for about 2 hours. Furthermore, it is 50 feet from my back porch and outdoor kitchen. I anticipate a LOT of time out on the dock. It will also serve as a swimming platform as the banks are very steep and the boys LOVE to jump off of it.

looks very nice...I was thinking about building one that size but went with something smaller so I could use the loader tractor to set it in place - not sure I have that many friends that'd come help for a job like that!