First Time Height Adjustment

As with everything else about our pier, height adjustment is simple and reliable. If you want to raise the pier, lift the pier up and step down on the footpad. That’s it! It stays there. Period.

The secret is a one-way cam, the leg can slip one way but not the other. The clever engineers at Pier of d’Nort figured out which way to mount the cam so it holds the pier up rather than the other way around.

When you want to lower the pier, all it takes is a 1/8 turn of a wrench to loosen the cam mechanism. Now you can lower or raise the pier. When you let go of the wrench the pier stays. No more set screws that can strip and rust. No expensive, slow, heavy, and finicky screw-type adjusters. (more about those shortly). Place your cursor over the closeup to see how our cam-cincher works.

Grab the cam’s shaft with a common half inch wrench and pull up. As you lift the frame with the wrench, the leg releases, allowing you to lower (or raise) the frame using the wrench as your lifting point. When you’ve got it where you want it, release the wrench to re-engage the cam. Large adjustments can be made in mere seconds, which comes in very handy when installing your pier for the first time. No other height adjustment scheme is faster.

Let’s say you’re installing your pier for the first time. Before installing a section, slip a pair of legs into their leg sleeves one at a time using the wrench to hold the cam “open.” You’ll be guessing how far to insert the legs and that’s fine. Throw the section in as shown previously. If the section lands too low, that’s good. From in the water, pick the section up from one corner until it’s level, then push the footpad to the ground. The pier is stiff enough so that the other footpad will now be above the ground. Move to that side and simply push that footpad down. Now you’re ready for the panels and the next section. If you can guestimate your leg insertion on dry land so that the frame sections always land a bit lower than horizontzal, the above simple procedure will allow your pier to be installed in not much more time than that taken walking back and forth.

Now let’s say the section lands higher than horizontal. Grab a camshaft with your wrench and lift, then raise the freed leg way up off the ground and lock it there. Move to the other side and, again using the wrench, raise that leg also. While still holding the frame up with with the wrench, lower the frame to where it’s level and drop the leg to the ground. Go back to the first side and push that footpad to the ground (or drop it by releasing the cam with the wrench). You’ve still only taken but a few moments.

Is it possible to install the pier the first time without getting in the water? Yes. For that you may need a little help. You’ll probably have spectators around anyway, being the first time. Bring your section out and latch it to the previous section, but instead of throwing it in, attach a rope to the leg end first. Then either throw the section in or lower it with the rope. Note whether it rests too high or too low and by how much. Then, with your helper, lift the section back up with the rope until it begins to fall toward you being careful to catch it before it gains any appreciable speed. It’ll come back to an angle of about 37.4395825846827364 degrees give or take. Now the legs are at a height where you can access the cam and thus adjust the legs deeper or shallower. If not right this second time, repeat until you’re satisfied. Once level, installing the two panels will get you close enough to the rope to untie it for the next section.

Adjustable Range

We custom cut each and every leg. Once they are cut to length, you will have an adjustable range of whatever amount you wish to order. Typically we will add about 30″ of leg-length to whatever the water depth is at a particular leg’s location. If the pier is twenty inches above the water, the tops of the legs will then extend 10″ above the deck, and you will have about 17″ of adjust ability in either direction.

Simplicity, along with the fact that it’s made of stainless steel means it’s reliable. It’s even replaceable, although why that would ever matter is hard to imagine.

To be precise, that would give you 17″ of adjustability in the upward direction and even more in the downward direction. Most folks want their leg-tops to line up nice and neat, so they are happy to measure their water depths. Some are less concerned about that, and only provide the water depth at the end of the pier, letting us interpolate the intermediate lengths. Still others guestimate or prefer to cut their legs after installation. The downside of that is that it’s more work to cut the legs “in situ” than it is to measure the water depths. We leave the preference to the customer. The minimum height that can be achieved from the footpad to the top of the deck is about 21″. There is no maximum leg length/water depth that can be achieved, however, from a practical standpoint, you certainly don’t want to put your pier into 50ft waters (unless you’re really tall). For deeper water we offer additional, easy-to-install crisscross bracing.

A word about above-deck adjustment

Being able to adjust the height of your pier from the top of the deck seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to expect of a pier. For some situations and for some people that option will outweigh other considerations, and for that reason we will be offering that capability soon with a retrofit-able jack.

In most cases, we have found that piers are too seldom adjusted to justify the added expense to the customer. To put what amounts to a jack in every single leg just to be able to adjust a pier the several inches it might vary from one year to the next seemed secondary to putting that money into beefier and better construction, better materials, better service, and better factory support.

A word about our system

Let’s say it’s spring and you notice that the water is up a foot or down a foot. It’s almost a trivial matter to go to your stack of frames with your wrench and slide each leg the necessary foot. They’re all right there. Alternatively, let’s say come mid-summer you realize that you need to raise your whole pier, say, six inches. Well, then the water’s warmed up, hasn’t it? Lift each corner in turn and push the footpad down. It takes literally seconds each.