On our 12x16 portion that is floating it will tip one way or the other when people move from side to side, but to me it never feels unstable like I would need a hand rail.

This floating dock was built by someone else but it is out of commercial dock floats that are black plastic filled with foam. My guess is it was a kit of some sort. It is built in two separate sections and bolted together. I know this because we disassembled it to load it on a gooseneck trailer to bring it home from the guy it was purchased from. It was two 6'x16' sections bolted together to make a 12x16.

Before we attached it to the fixed dock, we floated it out on the pond and in fact loaded a pretty heavy 8'x8' ramp that was used to attach it to the fixed portion.

The 12x16 had a wooden "transom" built and screwed onto the deck (which we removed) for a trolling motor so it could be used as a "redneck pontoon boat" as the previous owner called it.

To make it tippy and unstable, I would say I would have needed to get three teenage grandsons and paid them 5 bucks each to figure out how to do it, and they probably could have. But they swim, dive, and jump around on it and I have never felt the need for a hand rail. We put hand rails on the fixed portion of the dock so when the wife and I get old and decrepid we can bounce between the rails on our geriatric scooters, but fortunately so far we have not had the need for the scooters. We also put a hand rail on the ramp because when water levels are low it has some slant and I thought in case the ramp was wet people might feel more comfortable having something to hang on to.

But the floating dock, if made with adequate flotation (as opposed to barely enough to make it float) can be pretty stable. Those commercial floats all have weight ratings for them.

Last edited by snrub; 01/06/14 01:32 PM.
John

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