Figure 86. PQe guide with heavy duty rollers. This guide is needed only for "hard-working" 

 piles. 



In most installations pile handUng and driving equipment are so large as to preclude 

 placement of the piles after the floating system is installed. It is then necessary to drive each 

 pile precisely in its predetermined location by means of shore control and then move the 

 floating system into place and build the guides around the piles. This requires careful 

 planning and may necessitate the hookup of some floating elements after the main walk is in 

 place. A good location for a guide pile is in a knee at the junction of the main walk and a 

 finger. Usually the two end fingers that form the T at the end of the main pier may make 

 an ideal location for breast-docking large cruisers of twice the length of the sUps. For this 

 reason, end fingers are usually wider than the others and secured with guide piles at their 

 ends. Where end-of-pier breast-docking is permitted as a permanent feature of the system, a 

 large vessel must be considered in windloading calculations. 



As previously stated, finger piers longer than about 35 feet are normally wider than the 

 shorter fingers intended for boarding access and other reasons. In a floating system, the 

 width of the finger is often controlled by the need to withstand a large bending moment 

 caused by lateral windloads wherever they are applied in a horizontal plane. The fuU design 

 windload against a single shp-length boat is assumed to apply at the center of the finger, or 

 half the load is assumed to apply at the outer end of the finger, whichever creates the 



141 



