Boathouse construction

[wed]

I am about to build a dock/boathouse with lift for my toon. This may be a dumb question but I will ask it anyway. How wide should the slip be compared to the width of the toon. My toon is 8' wide. I have three different quotes with three different widths for the slip; 10, 11, and 12 feet. What are your thoughts on this subject.

[jimrs]

I just finished my boathouse and you ask a great question, wish I had before I did mine.

My boat is 8 1/2 feet wide and I figured 10 feet would be about right but they set it at 10foot center to center and the poles are pretty big around, so not big as I would have liked. At my old slip I had 15 feet and it was perfect. Plenty of room to get in and out without problems. Room on both sides for a walkway if wanted, It is nice to have both sides and front access.

So if I were you I would go with the over 12feet size.

[jimrs]

stupid computers

[wed]

Thanks Jimrs - You have a good point about the pole radius / center issue. Did your old sliip have a lift or were you accessing your boat at water level? I will be lifting the boat and initial access will be from the elevated deck. I will have a floating dock once I get in the water. What would you consider a safe step distance from the deck to the hanging boat? Also how long is your new slip compared to your boat?

[jimrs]

Here is a link to the construction of my boathouse. It spanned a four year period from 2004 to 2007. It's hard to get people out here to do anything fast or on time. We were lucky they had the lake drawndown for three years. But the drawdown caused more problems than I will go into here. Here is the link to the pictures

http://s286.photobucket.com/albums/ll115/jimrss/

I had a lift put in as soon as I could get the guy out here to install it. I have a 2 steps down at the front from the ground to a 6 ft wide walkway across the front of the stalls. The boat can come up to the edge of the walkway and still be lifted but I perfer a foot or so back, so as not to hit the walkway when we lower/raise the boat. My total boathouse is 24ft wide and 30 feet deep. For my 22 footer it fits in good. I still would have built it a little bigger if I was to do it again. I would think 30ft wide and 36 to 40 foot deep should have been the perfect size. Mine would not hold any larger boat than a 23footer or it would hang out the back of the house.

There is a lot to take into consideration when doing this type of thing as you will note after you finish. Size is not only more money for larger but harder to build. You only do it once so make sure that you have it planned right before you get started and find something amiss.

I love my boathouse and have no regrets. It's nice to be able to walk down the yard get in the boat and go. Trailer twice a year to load in and out and I do that at my sons house a few miles from my house. So trailer gets used about 1/2 mile a year.

[wwind3]

I am trying to buy a lake house with a boat stall. It has straps to hold up a boat now---think straps will work for a 20 ft toon or should I install trailer type lift with the boards etc if i can?

[jimrs]

There are more strap type around here than platform type. I have seen both and it looks like both would do the job. There are some that say the straps pull your pontoons loose by not supporting them. I have never seen one that had its pontoons pulled sideways because of a strap lift.

[Heatman]

Nice boathouse Jim!

You lnow why it took so long to build? I didn't see a single Hispanic in all those pictures...you should have had Herb send you some!

[HandymanHerb]

Hispanics are my neighbors, some of them are still working, now the most of the mexicans have left and most of what they left will be making me good money till they fall apart.

They have to take down 10- 2 story houses as the foundation not worth a dam and like the Lord said don't built your house on the sand and that was what most of the concrete was almost all sand, get what you pay for.

[wed]

I like it Jim. I really like the steel in the top. All of the houses around me are wood construction as mine will be. I also like the fact that you were able to dig a slip and build over it. I will be building out in the lake. Toledo Bend has a normal water level variation of 10+ feet so it is better to go out if you can. Plans are to backfill out to the boathouse as part of the shoreline stabilization.

I think I will end up with 34 X 22 for a single slip, the actual boat space will be about 12 X 28 with the remainder being decking for access and some built on storage. I will also use a lift platform similar to yours.

Thanks for the pics.

[jimrs]

Yea no hispanics were used in the making of this boathouse. The problem was that the first year we had the lake down and then the rain came and flooded it while the gates were open so they had to get the equipment out. The next problem was the guy that put on the roof got real busy with major jobs and could not get away to do this small job.

We had to dig into the shore as nobody else could get by us if we did not. This cove is only about 2foot deep and we had him redig out the channel that runs along the shore. He dug out further on mine than the rest but if I had him dig out for a in the water boat house I would not have had room for the extra dirt. I would have had to hire dump trucks to haul it off for me.

We dug out a channel over 1500 feet from deep water to the second house up the shore from me. It cost me $8000.00 for the dirt work alone the other people paid him $500 to dig out their channel. There were 8 families paying him so it was not too bad of a deal for him. We did have a few bitch as the $500 they paid did not get them the same amount of work I got. Until I told them I paid the $8000.00 for all my work and some of theirs, to dress up the outside edge and spread the dirt out further. You cant make everyone happy though, some are still bitching to this day.

Thats the year that the salvania hit us and we are still fighting it. I never even got the boat in the water this year. This is a never ending battle.