home the journey places and things the structures the hardware the pond animals we've seen flowers we have habitats how I built it things I've learned the people Some Random Pictures Highly Recommended Books Building the "Dock" The Internet is a plethora of information on anything you want to build However there is VERY LITTLE information whatsoever on how to build a dock. Most “Dock How to” documents say to buy prebuilt sections from a vendor. Each 4’ section is like $400.00. ARE THEY CRAZY? I found one site that talked about building a boat dock with pressure treated lumber and construction blueboard. Blueboard is used to insulate houses and comes in sheets. You can buy it at any store like Lowes or Home Depot. Here in southwestern PA blueboard costs $25.00 for a 4’X8’X2” sheet. Most of the cost of the dock is the blueboard. Anyway, this site talks about building it using blueboard and then ends with, “I’m not sure if this is going to float so I will post later the results.” So I built the dock on a leap of faith. Theoretically blueboard will float 55 pounds per cubic foot of blueboard. It’s nice to know that number but when you get down to it you have no idea what the resulting dock is going to weigh so you have no idea how much to use. My dock is made of 3 sections. Two thin sections that get you out onto the water and a bigger square section to sit on or dock the paddle boat or the row boat. The thin sections are 12’ long and the square is 10’X8’. Each thin section is made out of 2X10’s that just form a box. The planks are decking board which is about 1” thick and 5 3/4" wide. Each thin section has four sheets of blueboard so the bluebboard winds up being 8” thick. The larger square has 4 sheets of blueboard on either side. I thought about putting 4 sheets in the middle but then the dock would be unstable when you step on the side. The dock merely sits on the shore and there are two pieces of 1/4" steel rod that slide through two eyebolts that I screwed in. This way if I want to move the dock I just pull out the steel rod with some pliers. Halfway out on the dock I screwed in two eye bolts on either side of the dock. I then inserted two 8’ galvanized pipes through the bolts and into the mud at the bottom of the pond. I hammered them into the pond. This stops the dock from swaying back and forth. If I want to move the dock I merely pull them out. This results in a very stable dock and I highly recommend building it this way. All the parts for this project can be purchased at Lowes or Home Depot. My total cost was probably about $1,000 for the dock. We later expanded...