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Strength and Durability

06/01/2023

Strength & Durability

The more weight you put on the pier the more secure it gets. Of course if you walk a couple elephants out on your pier that trend might reverse. We’ve done some tests to determine just how much weight our piers will hold. Each 4×8 section will hold over 7000 pounds. Or 40 people. If you can get that many people on one section of pier, send us a photo. We’ll send it to the Guiness Book. Please don’t use elephants.

elephant tripping over its trunk on a pier

Better to use a giant.

Giant Pierre fishing at the end of a pier

Putting It to The Test

Fallen tree on pier

When a pair of two-ton trees falls on a pier, even our pier is going to suffer some damage. This pier was 19 hours old, and the owner is our luckiest customer. She’s alive, well, and has a new pier.

Pier leg with collapsed footpad in water

As you can see from the bent footpad, the cam mechanism held up. Not one single cam mechanism failed. Some footpads were even more severely bent.

Side of the aluminum pier bent

Here you can see what it took to yank the T&L mount’s gripper mechanism out of the dual dovetail grooves. Short of a tree falling on your pier, the grippers are going to hold. Note that the main spar itself is unbent.

Structural tubing elements have 1/8″ or 3/16″ thick walls. We learned from the tree accident that the structural elements are well matched. No single element consistently failed from section to section. Note the robust dual-welded attachment of the horizontal pivot tube to the vertical leg sleeve. This redundancy will serve well for decades.

Close-up of Pier of D'Nort leg braces

Braces are a full 1/4″ thick.

Our aluminum frames use stainless steel and nylon screws, nuts, bolts, rivets, springs, and washers. Our cinching cam is solid stainless steel.

We firmly believe our pier to be more structurally sound than piers twice its weight.

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