If you have property with shore access to anything from a pond to a bay, you probably have thought about the advantages of having a dock. You may want one for use as a fishing or swim platform even if you do not have a boat or personal watercraft. DIY docks are routinely made from various flotation and decking materials. However, if you want longevity for your dock and an easier time removing it for end-of-season storage, you need to build the perfect dock.
Dock Floats
If you have spent any time around do-it-yourself boat docks, you probably have seen a few that use plastic 55-gallon drums as floats. Hopefully, the repurposed drums originally held only food-grade products and not chemicals or petroleum products that could leak residue if punctured. Those makeshift floats are usually strapped into place under a treated lumber frame and decking that will eventually rot when exposed to direct water contact.
The better choice is encapsulated dock floats made of rotocast polymer and filled with foam. Rotocast, or rotational molding, eliminates seams, and foam prevents the air space inside the floats filling with water if the shell does get cracked or punctured. Hollow barrels fill with water if their shells are cracked or punctured. Square or rectangular dock floats are easier to secure than round barrels, and their wider surface area provides more stability.
Dock Hardware
Aluminum, silicon bronze, and stainless or galvanized steel are your basic choices for metal straps, fasteners and hardware to assemble, outfit and accessorize your dock. Aluminum alloys can be made to be highly corrosion resistant, but steel is stronger. Keep in mind that stainless steel is not rustproof. It is only corrosion resistant. Metal hardware on your dock is the second most likely fail point. The first is fasteners.
Docks are constantly subjected to wakes from the water, weight from people walking on them, and tugs from attached watercraft. This causes stress on every fastener from multiple directions. Use bolts instead of screws wherever you can, and only use marine-grade screws for deck installation.
Dock Decking
Treated lumber decking is going to need resealed every season, and it will degrade in the sun, weather and constant water exposure faster than composite decking materials. Cedar is another option, but it is still just wood. Composites are made of plastic and wood fibers and are extruded. They will not absorb water. There are solid and hollow-core decking options for your dock made of composite materials. There are even proprietary dock decking material systems that are offered by various companies, and they usually come with their own fastening systems.
If you install standard composite decking over a treated wood or other frame system, you may not want to use a hidden fastener system to make replacing individual deck boards easier in the future. Plus, you want to use long fasteners that will penetrate deeply into wood framing. Ideally, each deck board should be bolted, but that requires a tremendous amount of labor for an unknown return in dock longevity.
Dock Lighting and Power
Solar and low-voltage is a much safer choice than any lighting systems powered by regular household current. If you need a power pedestal for your docked boat, make sure you get one installed by a certified electrician with a lot of experience installing power systems for marine use. The risk of death by electrocution by mixing electricity and water is not something to take lightly. Voltage leaks cannot be seen and are an extreme danger. Low-voltage lighting should have any power packs connected at the shore far from the water and dock to a GFCI protected circuit.
Solar lights have come a long way in brightness, warmth of the color temperature of the LED lights and run time. Plus, there is dock hardware that has built-in solar lights such as solar light dock cleats. If you want solar light to be available for a late night return to your dock after a day on the water, use motion-detector solar lights instead of the light sensor variety that come on and stay on at dusk.
To really trick out your dock, consider doubling or even tripling its size. You do not need to just have a narrow walkway leading out to your boat. Dock section can be secured together, and you can add plastic dock wheels to roll them out at the end of the season. A bigger dock is an entertainment deck on the water where you can add some chairs, a barbecue grill, and a propane fire pit or table. Add a railing system with vertical metal supports and a chain or rope guide rail if you use your dock at night. You can put tiki lights on top of the vertical supports for extra light and for their mosquito repellent properties. There is no limit to how fancy your perfect dock can be.
