Floating pontoons
A floating pontoon is a deck that sits on the water rather than on posts driven into the bed. On an Australian waterfront it is the jetty you walk out on, the swim-out the kids jump from, or the platform a small boat ties to. You can buy one as a framed timber or aluminium job, or you can pin polyethylene cubes together yourself.
What a cube pontoon is
Each Aussie Cube is a sealed grey HDPE module, 500 × 500 × 400 mm, with a non-slip deck and lugs on every corner. Four cubes make 1 m². You lay them in the footprint you want — on the bank or in the shallows — drop mushroom pins through the overlapping lugs, and the deck is the pontoon. No welder. No timber to oil. No annual paint.
The standard grey cube is $99. Weight is about 7 kg. Assembled buoyancy is around 350 kg per square metre. Full numbers live on the cube specs page.
Cubes versus a framed timber or aluminium pontoon
A framed pontoon is a deck on an aluminium or galvanised frame, with large floats underneath. A boat-builder cuts it to a drawing, welds it, and you live with that shape. In very rough, exposed water — a long fetch, a pounding chop — a rigid framed pontoon can be the better tool. It spans further as one beam and it does not flex at every joint.
Cube modules are the DIY path. Any rectangle, L, or T in 0.5 m steps. Two people, no tools, assemble in an afternoon. Grow it next summer. HDPE does not rust or rot in salt. The honest trade-off: cubes flex at the pins. They belong on lakes, rivers, canals, and sheltered bays, not on an open, hammering shore.
How to size a residential pontoon
Work in half-metre steps. A 2 m × 2 m swim-out is 16 cubes. A 4 m × 2 m family pontoon is 32 cubes. Keep a walkway at least 1 m wide so two people can pass. If a boat or jet ski sits on it, match length to the vessel plus about a metre — see jet ski docks.
Skip the grid paper if you want: the build a dock calculator snaps length and width to the 0.5 m grid and counts cubes for you.
Pins, kits and accessories
Cubes lock with mushroom centre pins through four corner lugs. A pin spanner helps once the layout gets past a small square. Kits bundle cubes and pins so you are not counting hardware: the 16-cube swim platform is $1,699 (2 m × 2 m); the 32-cube pontoon kit is $3,199 (about 4 m × 2 m). Both are in dock kits.
Cleats, ladders, fenders, bollards and lights are in accessories. Pile cubes take a post. Doubles speed up a long walkway.
Sydney delivery
Shipping calculated at checkout (Standard & Express). Free Standard delivery across Sydney Metro on orders of 16+ cubes (e.g. Swim Platform Kit / Pontoon Kit). Smaller orders pay shipping — Standard and Express via the shipping calculator. Outside Sydney: shipping calculated at checkout. Cubes ship stacked.
Unsure on shape or cube count? Call Brenden on 0402 426 847.
