Building a Boathouse

I am in the process of designing and I will soon be constructing a new boathouse for my 2007 Supra 24SSV. At this point my plan includes a 10x30 enclosed slip with a 4' walkway around 3 sides, 6000# lift, 6x18 enclosed storage room, 14x13 sundeck and a 14x13 covered area. I hope to use a vinyl decking if it does not break the budget.

I plan on having 9' walls so I will have clearance for the tower and a couple of feet to lift the boat out of the water.

For those of you who have built or been around boathouses, I am looking for some suggestions on things you would have built different or things you would want out of a boathouse. Any advice or suggestions would be helpful.

I am still up in the air on if I should put some windows in the boathouse for light. I do have two 3' doors that will be at the entrance of the enclosed area and another set for the storage room. With the garage door open and the double doors open I will have light. I think the windows would be nice, but it also is another option for people to look in and see what you have. I know there is very little security in a boathouse, but my thought is out of site maybe better?

We put windows in our boathouse. They are nice to have the extra light and extra ventilation when you need it. They are high enough up that you would need a ladder to look in and see whats inside. What I am also adding in the peak on the shore side is a temp controlled barn fan to circulate the air when it is hot out. Also make sure to put plent of outlets above the boat for your tools, vacuums, etc..

my slip is at 12x 28 on my 04 SSV, I would make the slip wider on mine. At 12 feet I still need to pull the boards off my racks coming in. Make the walkway bigger if you haev the space. the cost differnce from a 4 foot walkway to an 8 foot will be marginal. IT's nice to haev the extra room.

I used to build boathouses and can tell you there are a million different ways to do it. One thing that I liked to do if you are forced into using wood decking instead of synthetic is to router the edges of the wood. I just looks great. Definately use vinyl siding. Easy clean up. I also like to put the boat lift mechanicals in the attic above the stall. It will keep grease from ever dripping down on your boat plus it will take away a place for birds to roost in the winter. That is assuming that you will have a finished ceiling in your stall. Even if you have an enclosed stall they will find there way in. Other than that everything else is personal preference. Do you have any building restrictions on your lake??? I can take some photos of an install at my boat house if you want.

Brad

That is a sweet setup.. Congrats.

I would stay away from Vinyl for your decking. Spend the extra money now and go with trex or a trex comparitive product.

Mine is all wrapped up now but I have been so busy had not had a chance to get any finished pics...

http://www.wakeworld.com/MB/Discus/messages/3183/393882.html?1166467524

Brad if you can post some pictures that would be great.

All of you guys with boat houses. Are you in places where the water never freezes over? Or do you use those bubbler systems that prevent freezing? And if you do use those how well do they work?

I live in texas. The lake never freezes over. the temp will never get below about 55-60

Mine is on hyco in NC. Heated lake, although the water in my cove will get pretty cold and some small amounts of ice very rarely...

Heated lake? Come again? How does that work?

Big fat coal fired power plant that discharges the turbine cooling water into the lake.

Thats amazing. I wish we had lakes like that in the North East

Manzo why do you suggest the vinyl over the Trex? The vinyl is more expensive and I have seen a few docks here mold and warp that were built out of Trex. I have priced the wood, composite and vinyl in the local stores and the vinyl is always the highest. I guess I am wondering what the pros and cons are?

I will get some picts in the next day or two. I will have to go buy and take them.

LKA,

First off, Trex should never warp. It is a plastic composite material with wood fiber mixed in so chances are any warping is due to the wood it is layed on or some other force. Additionally if it ever warps, splinters etc it has a 10 year warrenty....

My opinion, and it is just that, is the vinyl products that I have seen (including vinyl wrappd wood, solid vinyl and hollow vinyl products are inferior to the trex and trex equivilant products. As I stated my neighbors BH is made with the vinyl decking. 1 very slippery when wet and with wet feet, you can hear is as you walk accross it.

Additionally they have all wood wrapped in vinyl and personally I thin that looks bad, again these are only my opinions and experiences from the 7-8 boathouses that I have seen that use vinyl.

Now that said, my soffits and suppot posts are mostly wrapped in Cedar and stained. That will pove to be more maint. in the future but it looks great, matches the storage close and house which are all log...

(Message edited by zo1 on February 07, 2007)

I have vinyl on my deck and love it! Not sure of the brand but doesn't get slippery when wet.

I would go with trex or something like it before wood. Had a cousin that almost lost toe from splinter from wood deck (treated)

If you use or have trex material becareful when you clean it. I have a neighbor that got his pressured washed and they did it to close and now I get a splinter (little bits of fiberglass I think) every time I walk on it barefoot.

Here are some pics. Construction is wrapped up, I have to do some additions before it is ready for the boat to live there though...

One idea for you, I put two outdoor ceiling fans above the boat slip to help dry the bot out before covering...

how do you sink the poles in the water?

Thats beautiful. Great job and great design.

Ross, they used both a pneumatic air hammer and a hand held driving boot thing that looks like a bigger version of what you would get to pound metal fence posts in with.

Eric, thanks!

what was the total cost? if you dont mind sharing of course.

Our boathouse is just being finished. Around here everyone uses steel poles instead of wood...more expensive but lasts a lot longer I would think.
Here are some pics
It's got slips for 2 jetskis (4000 lb lift), 25 foot boat (6000lb), and the second level is 1000 sq ft of concrete. Also sink and closet are coming.






Tips -
1. Get a larger slip than you think you might want. Obviously easier to get a smaller boat in a big slip than vice-versa.
2. I dont have pics of this yet, but we are putting the cradles on a pole that is driven into the lakebed--so that even when waves hit the cradle, it does not move (it will just slide up and down on the pole and be raised/lowered by a conventional 6k lb lift). We got this idea from several people who did it and said it makes docking much easier in windy conditions.
3. As you can see in the last pic our walkway is slightly angled 'up' for the first 20 feet or so, to assist with runoff from waves hitting the shore and coming up on the dock.
4. The first 3 feet of the dock are not wood, but metal grate for the same reason as above. Strong wave action will 'pop up' or warp wood over time as it hits the first few boards by the shore.
5. If you're doing two jetskis on one lift, make the cradle 6"-12" higher for one so that you can take just one jetski out with ease.
6. Like others said get a high ceiling if you can, so you can come into your slip and get the boat out of the water without lowering your tower. We had to get a special permit for a variance in order to do this, but it was worth it.
7. Don't forget to put an ample amount of electrical outlets in convenient places
8. Be sure to find out limits on things like closet size, walkway distance, etc...we wanted to build a large closet but found that you are limited to a pretty small one.
8. We made our walkway 8 feet wide so that we can drive our ATV onto the dock to take gas all the way to the boat.

A lot of this is dependent on how big a body of water you're on, and what type of shore you are connecting to. I'm on large open water with a retaining wall, which makes the wave issue more of a big deal than some other shorelines.

And as you can see, we're a little short on water right now...

(Message edited by beanboy on February 12, 2007)

Eric +/- 43K

mine was $12k exactly. My house is only 20-30 yards from the water so storage is necc.

parker that looks crazy! is the lake drained in the winter?

Nope, not supposed to be drained anyway...
There was a year drought from Thanksgiving of 2005-2006 that left the lake 12 feet low.
In the last picture it's only like 6.5 feet low, so it's a lot better than it was. But as you can see, digging out the boat dock area gives us a lot more depth for times like this.
The lake is 45,000 acres so it takes a while to fill up.

Adam,

What width cradle beams do you have?

When you said "my slip is at 12x 28 on my 04 SSV, I would make the slip wider on mine. At 12 feet I still need to pull the boards off my racks coming in," you got me thinking.

Here is mine so far........it is a double slip and is 24' x 30'. It has taken most of my free time this winter but, all in all, I will have about $9,000 in it and that includes paying $3000 for having the poles driven. The builders around here charge $28-32,000 a boathouse like mine, which is ridiculous. So, it was a pretty good trade-off. I'm ordering the lift this week!

Sorry for the bad pic, it was taken through the window from the 2nd floor. I'll take better ones when the weather is better.

Hope I'm not beating a dead horse here, but I just got pictures of the system I talked about that we're using to keep our lift cradles from swaying in the water (once again, we're on open water where strong currents are more of a problem).

As you can see, the cradle is held up in place by two arms that slide up and down a 2" pole, which is attached to the boat dock itself.

How does the cradle slide down below the top support (circled in red)? Also, I would be a little concerned about it binding as it travels up and down the pipe.

Since the poles below the deck are exposed for now, I would paint them. We did ours last summer when the water was the lowest. I used a marine grade industrial enamel from Sherwin Williams. It will extend the life of the poles several years. Nice dock btw!

The support from the cradle is a C shape not a complete O, so it doesn't encircle the entire vertical pipe. I thought binding would be a problem as well, but supposedly its not.

We were thinking about painting, but were told by several sources it comes right off and then looks like ugly chipped paint....you have not had any trouble with your painted poles in the water?

Nice Dock, it looks like it's built like a tank. Will the lift go all the in the water with the water level down?

We told the builders that it has to go all the way down, but they're just now in the process of running the power to the dock from the house, so we'll see soon. Planning on putting a couple of jetskis in the lift March 5, so they better go down all the way! The water is around 2 ft deep under the jetski lift.

Here's a couple more pics



In that last picture all the white stuff you see over the concrete is salt. It was poured into the concrete to leave pits for texture, which should look neat once the salt all washes away.

Parker, that's a really nice structure, especially the upper deck.

The paint won't chip if you do the prep correctly. I got everything at Sherwin Williams. First, treat the bare metal with Rust Killer; I used Gem brand; you will need about 2 gallons; it's a green acid and I put it on with a spray bottle. It neutralizes the rust and turns it black. The acid leaves a sticky residue and it serves as a primer. Then paint with Industrial Marine Enamel paint.

I talked to a guy that worked on offshore rigs. He estimates that this will add 10 to 15 years to life of the poles. The most important part is to get a coating on the section where the water line will be most of the time.

Any idea how often it has to be re-painted?

Typically never. When they build a dock on my lake they paint the poles before they put them up. It slows down the oxidation process, but they still won't last forever. Maybe 30 to 40 years..., who knows?

This summer our lake was at an all time low with the drought in Texas. I took the opportunity to repaint mine; dock is 12 years old. Had to knock off a thick layer of rust and dried algae; got down to bare metal and put a new coat of paint. If I still live here when I'm in my 70's or 80's, I don't want to rebuild my dock.