Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Selecting a site Building a Pier

ahvatsa,
My pond took two years to fill. Its about 2' low now because of the year long drought. Hope we get a gully washer soon.
All my relatives are from Minneapolis. I took the family on a south Texas vacation a few years ago, just to check out the "worlds best water park" - The Schlitterbahn. Next time I visit Texas I may try some Striper fishing.

Jeff and Ahvatsa...
Yep, inspired...you betcha! I gotta admit, tho, that the "King of Overkill" side of me is tearing me up while I mind-engineer the structure. I keep going back to the actual support structure at the concrete piers. I definitely see poured concrete piers, drilled into the bottom (using a concrete truck, thank you Ahvatsa...your arms must look like Popeye's). My self-made dilemna comes in at the transfer of the concrete pier support to the 6 x 6 treated verts. Unless I am wrong, it appears that every structure I have seen in this forum, that uses a concrete pier, sets the treated timber inside the poured pier, permanently embedded. King Overkill sits on my right hand shoulder and keeps reminding me that if a timber ever had to be replaced, it would be wise to spend the xtra bux and use SS post bases on top of the conc pier and attach the timber there. King Overkill peers really deep into his crystal ball and see stuff like wracking ice floes that tear up the posts over time, premature failure due to inadequate green-treating, normal shelf-life exposure decay that the next generation may have to deal with...you know, stuff like that. Then General Chill-pill kicks in from the left shoulder and reminds me that "I'm doin' it again...you're makin' too big a deal, dude". Sink 'em in concrete, save the $ for the SS, and enjoy life without puttin' out for a 5 million dollar umbrella policy that you're not gonna use.

Brettski,
I am also the king of overkill. I built a cedar clubhouse for my kids big enough to live in - I have only seen them in the club house once - I think I will convert it into a deer hunting stand.
If I ever have to replace my 6x6 cedar piers, I imagined that I would just slap new ones in, along side the older ones. I would just set the bottom of the new posts on top of the concrete footings and bolt the top to the existing deck beams and solid portions of the older posts. After the new posts were secured, I could cut out any rotten post material.
This was the vision, (hallucination)

avahasta,

Great looking pier. Avahasta envy is kicking in.

Nice cowboy boots and sweater on the dog, matches mom's outfit.

Tuzz, you might consider a floating structure. I built a 10x10 floating dock using plastic 55 gal barrels that you can get at a farmstore or at a soft drink bottler as throw aways. The cost was about 500$ mostly for the treated lumber deck. the barrels go for about 6$ each and I happen to already have them on hand.

Or you can wait for a draught, mine took 8 years to occur, I recently finished a 16x16 peir to replace it. The structure I used was railroad ties for post and beam structure and then built 2x6 treated deck on top of the railroad tie structure.

rockytopper,

Any pics of that new dock?

I am interested in material for installing on the deck of the building. I have reread the topics and picked up the composite and I looked in at Home Depot but they did not have much. any suggestion or ideas would be appreciated--thanks.

ceadmin,

I know this is not the picture you asked for, but I thought I would show you a picture of my floating dock and raft.

Ceadmin, at the present my PC at home is on the blink eat by virus. I will eventually update my pond page on my web site to show the new pier and 100 foot of retaining wall also made from railroad ties. That is if it ever fills up again. E-mail me I will send you some pic's sooner. I cannot work on my website here at work & a new PC may be awhile in getting, still paying for the pier & wall.

Fuzzy bear, nice floater very similar to the one I built. What is floating it? Foam or barrels?
The barrels worked ok for me except the dock should have been 10x20 instead of 10x10 because the weight of my 16 ft walk made the dock sink down at the back until some one walked onto it and it would level it self.

rockytopper,

It is actually the styrofoam billets that Dow makes. If have PDF files of the plans if anyone wants them. I hinged it at the shore (not shown) by putting a 1" galvanized pipe thru the 4x4 posts and dock and then another galvanized pipe thru eye hooks located between the dock and the raft. That allows the raft to float up and down with the fluctuating water levels I have. It has worked pretty good so far. The hinging at the raft and placing a billet under the end of the dock, eliminated the tipping you were talking about rocky.

Hey i would love a copy of those plans, i am building a dock of my own but would have to make the walk way longer will that cause me any issues with this design?
Shaun

Shaun this is an old thread. As to your question I assume you are building a floating dock as pictured above. As I stated I used plastic barrels. They work fine but do not have the floating capacity as Styrofoam blocks or the flotation devises that Dwight used on his Barge/deck boat project. If the walk out gets too long and creates a load on the dock that makes it tip up under the weight simply add a float or floats under the walk itself to counter this. In my case if I had made the dock longer it's weight would have overcome the walkway pushing down one end of it. If you have to go way out you might want to drive piers and make part of the walk solid and only hinge the end of it at the dock

I'd like a copy of those plans too. That dock in the photo is exactly what I want to build.

Bump,Bump,Bump...Are these plans still available??

Have you tried to PM fuzzy bear for plans? As stated this is a very old thread. He might not be hanging around very often to see your request and reply to you guys.

http://www.canadianfishing.com/dock/qal.htm

This is the website for the dock plans ...du