Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Concrete Dock

We are currently putting in an all concrete pre-fab dock. Originally I was going to do a treated wood one with telephone poles as footers, even bought a half dozen used poles.
Then we saw an all concrete dock that some friends of ours had put in in and decided to pay a little extra for a maintenance free dock that should last for a long long time.

Ours will be 24.6' long 10' wide, we wanted to get it out far enough so that if we or the kids ever put a diving board on it the water will be plenty deep. It drops off into 15' pretty fast.




The footers for the columns are 36" round by 5' deep









Poured columns a few days after putting footers in








The pre-fab beams and deck sections are all built and will be coming in on a big truck with a boom as soon as the rain here slows down enough for the dirt to dry out for the truck. Should be within a week, then all that will be left to do is ad a stainless steel ladder, put a couple short fish structures under the dock and let the pond fill up.

The dock our friends put in that gave us the idea, I had never even heard of anyone around here putting one in on a farm pond before.

I think that will be amazing. Just a lil tip make, sure and don't get a real smooth surface on the concrete. They get very slippery when wet (learned the hard way on tht one). We did a stamped concrete with a sealer next to our pool. Busted my ass a few times now.

Yep, that is good advice!
The contractor that made the pre-fab beams and deck broom finished the deck slabs for us. We had an option for all kinds of finishes on it...they even will add/install diving board, slide, railing or about anything anyone would want on a dock. We stayed pretty simple with ours.


I'm pretty excited to see how ours turns out, next summer when the pond is full I can't wait to dive off the dock after a hot day at work or just sit and chill with beer and relax on it !

That's pretty cool! never saw that before.

I would read this twice.

My lab loves jumping off ours. Kids and wife and I do also but not like the dog. She would do it all day long if someone threw anything in the water for her.

My neighbor slipped on a boat ramp around 3 weeks ago. Back was hurting like heck but he still worked for 2 weeks before going in to see a doc. Burst a disk, cracked some vertebra. Spent 5 days in the hosptial, pins, rods and screws. Said they had to fuse 3 vertebrae together, now it will be a 3 month recovery before he can go back to work.

I'll stick with wood, but I understand the attraction of concrete. Falling on concrete is just so much less forgiving, And gravity has increased for me over the years:)

That will definitely be the Cadillac of docks!

I think you will b fine with the broom finish. Thts how r driveway is and it's not slippery. In my opinion theres more pro's than con's going with concrete. Seen one on the web before tht was like the kids say now EPIC. NOT MY PICTURE TOOK OFF THE WEB.

I have also noticed that problem!

I don't think Newton was lying about the universal gravitational constant. It must be some other factor in my case.

That is a VERY sweet dock, I saw that pic on the net too! It is amazing everything that can be done with concrete as far as color, stamping and shapes.

Finished our dock last Friday. I like how it turned out, way bigger and beefier than I originally thought it would be.
All that is left to do on it now is add an 8' prefab concrete double step on front and put a six step stainless ladder on left side.

Process showing it going together;

Beautiful dock, H2Ofowler.

Your fish will also be the only ones in the entire state of Ohio that have a tornado shelter installed in their home.

Looks very nice and should last a very very long time!

And as good a pic of the broom finish I could get, shouldn't be any slip hazard.






I have read through a lot of dock threads on here and have seen some amazing looking docks, never saw anything about concrete ones (unless I missed it, sure could have). The whole concrete dock concept was actually pretty new to me until a little over a month ago.
The guy that delivered the pre-fab upper of ours said that ours was the fifteenth he has delivered so far this year in our area. We even talked about a guy in the southern part of our county that is draining his pond down to put one in. Like I said earlier we were going to build a stout pre-treated wood one until we heard about this. The cost of ours was close to 5K when all said and done but it should be about maintenance free and literally last forever.
Just another option for people with ponds, wood, concrete, floating or combos of all have their pros and cons. Just thought I would share what we ended up choosing.

This looks amazing. The no maintenance is a awesome advantage. 5k is pretty damn cheap for the years and fun tht will be had on it. Your grandkids - grandkids will still b using this dock. Your whole place looks like a place anyone would b proud to have. Looking forward to some full pool pictures to come.

Thanks Stringer!
I'm sure looking forward to it getting filled up and slowly stocking it. Hopefully we get plenty of rain late fall and next spring. Our plan is to build our forever house facing the pond in the next couple years along with a pole barn, we are drawing up some house plans now.

Can't wait to post up pics of the family having fun at the pond and the boys pulling in some nice fish, the whole place just relaxes me being out there and it hardly even has any water in yet!

Did the $5k price tag included the footings and pilings? If so - that is really amazing and well worth the $$. I would love to do that here.

Yes
For the top (pre-fabbed beams and top) it was $3300, my youngest sons friends who work with concrete helped with the footers and columns.

The two pre fab steps are done and waiting to be delivered, I just need to prep it by digging in the solid block footers and spread sacked pea gravel over it all to keep steps from settling much. Problem is the frozen rock hard ground right now...I might try and spud/chip enough out to get everything set for the steps. The steps are concrete 8' long 8" high, one is 26" wide the other 12".

Very nice

I got the footers for the prefab steps dug in a couple weeks ago and it was finally dry enough to get them delivered and set today.












The dock is pretty much complete now except for a six step stainless ladder on the left side.

Neat idea.

I never thought of a concrete dock. With the price of wood decking, might be something to consider.

I'm confused. Why in most of the views the pillar of concrete furthest out in the pond comes all the way up under the slab above it. But in the view from the water looking back at the dock (bottom picture in this post) and only in that view there is a concrete pillar and then some type of post between the pillar and the top slab? Is that a different person's pond or is there a step to surround that post with concrete later to match the later pictures?

This looks really cool. I wonder if they have a slimmed down version for costs savings in smaller ponds (say more a typical width and length of a pond dock?)

I think you might be confusing the concrete joists with smaller posts when the joists are viewed from the head-on perspective from the water side?

Ah yes!! Thanks RAH, with the deep shadows under the platform I missed that those were the concrete joists seen only on end profile. Thanks!

Love the permanence of concrete!

This looks amazing. The no maintenance is a tremendous advantage. 5k is pretty damn cheap for the years and fun that will be had on it. Your grandkids - grandkids will still b using this dock. Your whole place looks like a place anyone would b proud to have. Looking forward to some full pool pictures to come. I am surprised you are doing it yourself, it seems like you are really good at it. I would have hired concrete contractors Denver to do it for sure, as I would have no idea how to do it myself .

Looks great! Anything you would do differently?

FWIW: We are considering doing a mostly enclosed concrete pier within the next couple years. Would have glass walls and LED lighting kit underneath.

If you add a sound system, then all of the fish raves will be at your place!

Thank you.
As far as the dock we are pretty happy with it.


This is how it looks right now with the pond full.

Ranger, you could sell tickets to see something like that.

Truly, that looks good.