Homeowners usually arrive at this decision having already formed a preference, often from a neighbour's dock or from something seen on another lake. Then we sound the bottom and the conversation changes.
Because on Lake George the dock type is not chosen so much as revealed. What is under your water at the point where the structure has to stand determines what will work, and the other considerations — cost, appearance, permit footprint — arrange themselves around that.
The three options
| Timber crib | Driven pile | Floating | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How it stands up | Mass and friction — a stone-filled timber box resting on the bed | Embedment — a pile driven into the bottom material | Buoyancy — pontoons restrained by anchors or guide piles |
| Needs | A bed that will carry load; works over ledge and boulder | Sand, gravel or sediment deep enough for real embedment | Sufficient depth; a way to restrain it |
| Winter | Stays in; resists ice through mass | Stays in; vulnerable to ice jacking if embedment is short | Must come out every year before ice-in |
| Working life | 30–50 years with periodic crib work | 25–40 years | 15–25 years |
| Feel underfoot | Immovable | Immovable | Moves with wake and weather |
| Adapts to water level | No — fixed elevation | No — fixed elevation | Yes — rides the seasonal change |
| Typical Lake George use | The default across most of the lake | Where there is genuine soft bottom with depth | Swim platforms and deep-water extensions |
Why cribs dominate this lake
A timber crib is an open box of heavy timber — historically hand-notched logs, today dimensional timber and drift pins — built above water, floated into position, and filled with graded stone until it sinks and settles onto the lake bed.
It is an old technology and an extremely well-suited one, for a specific reason: it does not need to penetrate the bottom. Much of the Lake George shoreline is ledge, glacial boulder and hardpan, sometimes under only a foot or two of sediment. You cannot drive a pile into that in any meaningful way. A crib does not care — it sits on top and works by being too heavy and too broad to move.
Cribs also spread load across a wide footprint, which matters on an uneven rock bottom where a point load would simply rock on a high spot. And they resist ice the way you want a shoreline structure to: through mass and friction rather than by trying to out-muscle the sheet.
The trade-offs are real. Cribs are more material, more labour and more permitting than a pile dock. They settle over decades and eventually need re-stoning and re-levelling. And they are a substantial physical presence on the lake bed, which is part of why the permit review exists.
When driven piles are the right answer
Pile docks are faster, cheaper and less intrusive than cribs, and where the bottom supports them they are an excellent solution. The requirement is honest embedment in material that will hold.
The failure mode to understand is refusal. A pile driven into a bottom with ledge or a large boulder a few feet down will stop hard, and it will feel like it has hit something solid — because it has. But resting on a rock is not the same as being embedded in material that grips the shaft. Come winter, ice bonds to the pile, the sheet lifts, and a pile with nominal embedment comes up.
This is why we probe before designing a pile dock rather than after. A site that looked straightforward can turn out to be two feet of sand over ledge, at which point the correct recommendation is a crib and the correct time to make it is before anyone has been quoted.
Where the bottom genuinely is deep sand or gravel — and there are such shorelines on this lake — driven piles are a good, economical structure with a 25 to 40 year life.
Where floating sections make sense
Floating docks solve two problems that fixed structures cannot.
The first is deep water close to shore. Where the bottom drops away quickly, a crib tall enough to reach the surface becomes enormous and expensive. A float simply sits on the surface regardless of what is below it.
The second is water level change. Lake George is drawn down several feet over the winter, and fixed structures are at one elevation while the water is at another. A float rides the change, which is why floating swim platforms are so common here.
The cost is that every float must come out before ice-in, every single year, without exception. An ice sheet forming around a float will lift, twist and destroy it. That is an annual removal, storage and reinstallation cycle, and it should be priced into the decision rather than discovered later.
Floats also move underfoot. Some owners like it; some find it unpleasant, particularly older family members. Stand on one before you commit to it as your main structure.
Most good answers are hybrids
The framing of "which one" is slightly false. A great many Lake George properties end up with a crib or pile pier out to usable depth, with a floating section or a boat lift beyond it.
There is nothing wrong with mixing. The permit counts total surface area regardless of how it is supported — 700 square feet including the walkway, for most residential properties — so the structural choice is genuinely free within your footprint. Use the fixed structure where fixed works and the float where it earns its keep.
What the permit cares about (and does not)
The Lake George Park Commission's dimensional limits apply to the structure regardless of type:
- 700 square feet of surface area including any walkway
- 8 feet maximum pier width
- 40 feet maximum overall width including all projections
- No more than 40 feet beyond mean low water, or 100 feet from mean high water — whichever is more restrictive
- 16 feet maximum height for anything built on the dock, above mean high water
- 20-foot setback from each adjacent property line projected into the lake
How many docks you may have scales with frontage: one straight pier at 45–65 feet; one dock plus a mooring at 66–150 feet; two docks or one E-shaped wharf plus two moorings at 151–250 feet, and so on.
Note what is not on that list: dock type. The Commission cares about footprint, extent, height and setback. Whether you achieve that with cribs, piles or floats is an engineering decision, not a permitting one — though how you build does affect DEC and Army Corps involvement, because placing crib stone on the bed of the lake is a different proposition from driving a pile.
How to actually decide
- Sound the bottom across the proposed footprint — depth and profile.
- Probe for the sediment-to-ledge transition. How much material is there, really?
- Establish your setback lines and see how much usable width you actually have.
- Assess exposure. Which way does weather arrive, and how long is the fetch?
- Decide how you will use it. A swimming and sitting dock has different requirements from one that berths a heavy cruiser.
Those five things, in that order, produce the answer. Everything else — appearance, decking material, railing style — is downstream of them and is genuinely a matter of preference.
If you would like us to do the first four on your shoreline, that is what a site visit is for.
Lake George Docks
We design, permit and build docks, boathouses, cribs and shoreline structures across all 32 miles of Lake George, New York — and repair what the lake does to them. Questions about your own shoreline? Call (518) 260-9878 or send us the details.
