Building a dock, need help

[Mdoiron]

Looking into building a floating dock to put by the house. Dock will be approx 30' long and built on barrels (will be floating). Dock will need to be floating because of tides and will need to be removed in winter because of freezing. Bottom is muddy muck (soft). Because of depth (only a few feet), I assume I need to secure the dock using steel posts driven into the ground. My question is how deep would I usually need to go? Do I need to hit solid ground or because the dock is floating and it's mostly to stop it from going from side-to-side, is a couple feet likely enough? Also, how do I remove the posts in the Fall? Any tips/advice appreciated.

 

[Jippy66]

We install and remove a Candock modular floating dock at our cottage every year. The bottom is muddy/sandy and we pound 1.5" fence posts in roughly 1'-1.5' deep. In the fall we just twist them until the suction is broke and they pull out. There's wave action from wind and wake, so the poles are mostly for keeping the dock stationary. It allows the dock to raise up and down on the lake which is controlled by a dam and fluctuates 2'-3'. You may only be able to get the poles in so deep, but the deeper the water under the dock, the deeper you should sink the poles in.

 

[Dave burke]

We do something a little different. Dock is floating and about 35 ft long in 4 sections. We have two anchors we leave in the water and chain them to the dock in the spring. When we take the dock out in the fall, we tie buoys to the chains.

We don’t have a lot of current and the dock is pretty stable.

 

[Weeb]

I use to drive the poles three or four feet. Especially if your hooking boats to it. Make a cap that slides over the top of the pipes so they don’t deform on the top when you bang them in. We took them out with a pipe wrench wiggling them back and forth.

 

[GTBRMC]

We use something like this: Dock Accessories | Dock Post Auger for 2" Pipe | VE-VE Inc.

We screw the pipe down 18 - 24" into the sand & stony bottom. In a semi-protected Lake Michigan bay, they hold up quite well as a system when the whole dock is installed. Our poles are cross-drilled at the top (opposite end of pole from auger) and we've experimented with strap wrenches and other methods over the years, but have found that an old axle from a push mower slipped through the cross holes is best method to drive poles into lake bottom.

Note a significant advantage of this installation method is ease of removal at end of season. Exact same method as install, but in reverse. MUCH easier to remove than pipes driven into lake bottom via violent sledge application.

Note: Our dock MUST come out every year. We've had 15 foot ice dams build up during the spring thaw on occasion.

 

[bumpy]

We use 2 - 8' long versions of these for our tie outs to keep the boat away from the dock. I drive them in with a long galvanized pipe walking in circles to about 6' deep, and cover them with pvc pipe. If its' not too mucky for you to walk, these are bulletproof. They use them to help support telephone/power poles. If you do use them, put them in before the dock, so that you have an un-obstructed walking path. Ask me how I know......