No project is complete without a side project: we are taking a break from the tiny house to construct a floating pontoon for our swimming pond.
Calling it a “break” might be slightly misleading. We only had one and a half days left at the property, several other jobs waiting for us and absolutely no excess time on our hands. Naturally, this seemed like the perfect moment to begin another building project.
Our old "pontoon" was actually the very first thing we ever built on the property. It has served us well to get into the pond without coming out completely muddy, but we wanted something more substantial that would make it easier to get in and out of the pond.
The new build also gave us the perfect opportunity to test a material we have been considering for the outside cladding of our tiny house.
For the surface of the pontoon, we ordered terrace boards in a finish called Linax Grey. The wood is pre-treated with linseed oil and grey pigment to help protect it from the elements and give it a soft grey tint.
We have been thinking about using the same product for the exterior of the tiny house, but choosing cladding from a small sample is rather different from seeing several square metres of it outdoors. Building the pontoon allowed us to test how the colour looks in natural light, how the material is to work with and how it fits into the landscape.
Spoiler alert: we really like it.
It is always nice when a side quest also settles a much bigger design decision.
Our first task was to cut 35 terrace boards to length.
After cutting them, we treated every exposed end with the matching linseed oil supplied by the wood manufacturer. Cutting treated timber exposes fresh, unprotected wood, so sealing those ends should help prevent moisture from getting in and extend the life of the boards.
The oil initially looked much more transparent than expected, but the familiar grey tint appeared as we applied it to the timber.
We also pre-drilled the screw holes near the ends of every board. This extra preparation takes time, but it reduces the risk of the wood splitting when the screws are installed. After our previous projects, we have become enthusiastic supporters of pre-drilling. There are few things more satisfying than assembling something and discovering that all the holes are already waiting in exactly the right places.
With the boards prepared, we loaded the car with timber, tools and one enormous black floating box and headed down to the pond.
Our pontoon consists of two sections.
The first is a fixed wooden platform attached to screw piles on the bank. The second is a floating section that extends into the pond and moves with the water level.
We had already installed the screw piles while testing the equipment for our tiny-house foundation. That experiment turned out to be rather useful: instead of having a random collection of test piles near the pond, we now had the beginnings of a pontoon foundation.
We built the base from construction timber and gave it an additional coat of linseed oil. Although we joked about expecting it to last for the next 20 years, the real goal was simply to give the structure as much protection as reasonably possible.
The timber frame was fixed to the screw piles and reinforced with bolts so it would remain stable under the weight of the deck – and, more importantly, under the weight of both of us enthusiastically jumping into the pond.
Special metal brackets that we purchased at a specialist are fixing the platform to the floating section. One half of each bracket faces outward, while the matching half on the floating frame faces inward. A long bolt passes through both pieces and allows the pontoon to rise, fall and wobble with the water without drifting away.
Once the fixed frame was secure, we began attaching the grey terrace boards.
We had marked regular intervals on the supporting structure beforehand, making it easier to keep every board straight and evenly spaced with room for water to drip off. We fixed them with stainless-steel terrace screws, which are better suited to constant exposure to rain and moisture than ordinary construction screws.
As the surface gradually covered the frame, the pontoon began to look like a finished structure rather than an optimistic arrangement of timber beside a pond.
The main floating element is a large but surprisingly lightweight plastic box filled with buoyant foam, which we also got from the specialist store. It has moulded flanges around its edges, allowing a timber frame to be screwed directly onto it.
We constructed a reinforced frame around the float, adding enough supporting timber to keep the finished platform from feeling unstable. The floating section would need to carry the decking as well as the weight of several people, so this was not the moment to be overly economical with structural supports.
Once the frame was attached, we moved the floating section closer to the water before adding all the decking. This made it lighter and slightly easier to manoeuvre.
Getting the pontoon into the water was the part we had planned least thoroughly.
We needed to lower the floating section into the pond, align its metal brackets with those on the fixed platform and insert two long bolts – all while the structure was floating, moving and becoming considerably heavier than it had seemed on dry land.
Holding the moving structure in position while inserting the hinge bolts was more difficult than expected. After a few tense moments and some rapid repositioning, both bolts finally slid into place.
With the remaining terrace boards installed, our side quest was complete.
The fixed section feels solid, while the floating section moves gently with the water. The hinge allows both parts to remain connected even when the pond level changes.
Most importantly, the pontoon makes swimming much easier. Instead of navigating slippery stones and the uneven bank, we can walk straight out over the water and jump in.
In this video we also took the opportunity to evaluate the outdoor kitchen we built in Episode 1 and consider how it has held up.
Overall, we are still extremely happy with it. We would give our first-ever build approximately 95 percent.
The remaining five percent currently contains some very large hornets.
We discovered that they had found a comfortable home in the gaps between the OSB and the metal roof. In retrospect, closing those openings during construction would have been a sensible idea. However, something that we fixed easily with regular steel wool later.
We also noticed that the screw piles could have been installed deeper. Based on what we learned while building the tiny-house foundation, we could probably have removed the grass and pre-drilled the ground before turning the piles in by hand.
The temporary staircase – built from scraps and never really designed to be permanent – is also beginning to show its age. Placing concrete pavers beneath it would have kept the wood away from the damp soil.
Of course, temporary solutions have a habit of becoming permanent once you get used to them.