Our approach
Having developed our products over a span of nearly fifty years in a northern freshwater environment, our engineering methodology remains among the highest quality and most enduring within the industry. Throughout this time, we’ve maintained a core set of design fundamentals and rigid quality control process that directly mirror performance specifications of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Michigan State Waterways Commission.
Additional detail regarding our unique product design is provided below, and general product specifications as well as our brochure can be viewed / downloaded immediately following this section.
Our products are designed with a monocoque frame foundation, which is entirely unique to the industry. Identical to the construction format of aircraft fuselage and wing sections, a closely spaced arrangement of exterior framing walls and interior bulkheads are sandwiched by steel skins and fastened together in an extremely rigorous format. The end result yields one of the strongest and yet forgiving structural shapes known to modern engineering principles.
The monocoque structure offers many unique advantages, but is particularly well-suited to dampen all applied loads. Forces from wave, wind, impact, and anchorage are transmitted across thousands of fasteners throughout the entire frame – received as tensile forces on upper and lower steel skins, or as compressive forces over the network of timber framing. This distribution of forces allows our floating docks to withstand incredible loads with extremely minimal deflection and almost no detectable impact on stability.
Virtually every square-foot of our floating docks receive flat-bottom flotation support, which offers two sources of superior stability. First, superimposed live loads are contacted by this buoyancy factor, resulting in a comfortable, consistent, and predictable freeboard loss. Second, vertical pitching reactions to wave activity is far more subtle than that of an intermittent flotation support design. Much like the difference a small barge and a heavy steel navigation buoy, the barge’s total support system inherently offers superior stability.
Our floating docks utilize a hybrid manufacturing format of the highest quality materials, specifically intended for freshwater marine environments. Pressure treated southern pine exterior framing walls and interior bulkheads are joined together with galvanized structural steel plates, and further braced with heavy-gauge galvanized sheet steel skins. Oversized high-strength electroplated bolts are used to join floating dock modules, and a premium grade of lumber matching exterior framing yields a uniform appearance.