It is nice standing on the waters edge, but it can get quite muddy sometimes. We decided to build a dock so we could have a place to walk without getting dirty. And a long term plan of it extending out over my pond. But for now we will start with one section and see how it goes. Building it mostly on the land and then laying the end with the floats in the water seems to be the way to go. It is very heavy, using 2x6 planks and the large 6x6s and 4x4s. But with 6 55 gallon barrels I should have over 2500 pounds of buoyancy. More than enough for the lumber plus us. Its hard to say exactly how much the dock weighs, I am guessing over 750 pounds. So with two of us on it maybe we are pushing 1200 pounds. So that leaves room for more people to stand on it if we wanted than just two.
There were some old 6x6 timbers left on the property by the previous owners. And a couple of them were in good enough shape to use, though most had major rot in them so we had to skip them.
Some of them looked good at first glance but once we lifted them ants came pouring out of them where they have been rotting for years.
I guess we will cut them up and use the good parts for something else.
Finding a few good pieces we build the outside frame with them and down the center is a 4x4 screwed together.
I found some 55 gallon barrels that we used for floats. Each can offset around 400 pounds.
Using paracord we tied the barrels to the frame.
The jack stands held it all up, but I stood by close with the jack if something fell.
With six barrels attached it should be water worthy. The barrels were new and in good condition so they should last many years I hope.
We take the dock off the jack stands and its time to push it into the water. We put the remaining boards on once it was on the water so it reduced the pressure on the barrels.
It floats! Next is to take it out on the pond to see how well it balances. We have paddles and should be able to slowly get it out to the middle. I will do a follow up post once we get it there. And also as we build more of these docks. We plan on attaching them to each other. So I can have an area to walk out on over the water.