Usually not an Environmental Resource Permit — but that is not the whole answer.
In most residential Florida situations, no — floating docks and floating vessel platforms are exempt from Environmental Resource Permitting under Fla. Stat. 403.813, within size limits. The limits are 1,000 square feet over water for a floating dock or swim platform, and 500 square feet for a residential jet ski or boat lift port at an existing dock, slip or seawall.
What follows is the detail behind that answer, including the situations where review is still required. We have written this to be accurate rather than reassuring, because a homeowner who relies on a too-simple version of this and gets it wrong has a much bigger problem than a slow approval.
Floating vessel platforms — the drive-on ports we sell for personal watercraft, and floating boat lift ports — are exempt under Fla. Stat. 403.813(1)(s). Under that provision, qualifying owners are not required to obtain separate permission to use state-owned submerged lands. The exemption applies to non-commercial residential installations up to 500 square feet, or 200 square feet in Outstanding Florida Waters, installed at an existing dock, slip or seawall.
Three parts of that sentence do real work. "Non-commercial residential" excludes marinas, rentals and commercial operations. The square-footage cap is a cap on the platform, so it is worth knowing your footprint before you order — all four of our port sizes sit well inside 500 square feet, and even the Max at 15 ft x 5 ft is 75 square feet. And "at an existing dock, slip or seawall" means the exemption contemplates adding a port to structure you already have, not creating new structure in open water.
Sizes and footprints for each port are listed in the jet ski dock cost guide and on the jet ski dock page.
Floating docks and floating swim platforms are exempt from Environmental Resource Permitting under Fla. Stat. 403.813(1)(b), up to 1,000 square feet over water, or 500 square feet in Outstanding Florida Waters, one per parcel, non-commercial.
Two things are different here compared to a vessel platform. First, the one-per-parcel condition: the exemption is not a licence to add floating structure repeatedly. Second, and more important, a Letter of Consent for state-owned submerged lands is typically still required. The permitting exemption and the authorization to occupy sovereign submerged lands are two separate questions, and the exemption answers only the first. Local building and zoning rules apply on top of both.
This is why we size platforms with the limit in mind from the start. Our largest standard swim platform, a 12x20, is 240 square feet — comfortably inside 1,000, and inside 500 for Outstanding Florida Waters as well. Sizes and prices are in the swim platform guide. Larger dock layouts are where the cap starts to matter, and you can check total area against your cube count on the configurator before anything is ordered.
A statutory exemption from Environmental Resource Permitting is a specific thing. It is not a statement that no government body has anything to say about your dock. Several other layers can still require review, and any one of them can apply even when your structure clearly qualifies under Fla. Stat. 403.813:
None of these are reasons not to build. They are reasons to find out which ones apply to your address before you build, which takes a phone call and not a lawyer in most cases.
Before we build, DockLife confirms that your site qualifies under the exemption and flags any local or HOA requirements we can see. That is part of the job, not an upsell. In practice it means checking your footprint against the applicable square-footage limit, checking whether the water body is designated as an Outstanding Florida Water, looking at whether the plan attaches to a seawall, and telling you what your association is likely to want to see.
Where a Letter of Consent or a local approval is needed, we tell you that up front rather than after the deposit. Florida dock and platform prices include delivery and professional installation; jet ski ports include free Florida delivery with installation optional at $200. Payment is 50% to schedule and 50% on completion. The full rate card is on the pricing page.
This page summarizes Florida law and is not legal advice. Statutes, agency practice and local rules change, and the facts of your site matter. Confirm your specific situation with the reviewing agency, your local building department, or your own counsel.
Everything above is Florida statute and does not transfer. Outside Florida, permitting is state and county specific — and often layered with a lake authority, a utility that controls the impoundment, or a homeowners association. The customer handles those local approvals. We do not advise on out-of-state permitting, because a wrong answer from us would be worse than no answer.
Outside Florida we sell kits only: freight is quoted per destination rather than estimated in advance, you or your contractor receives and assembles the shipment, and Trex decking is not available. What ships and how is set out on the nationwide shipping page.
Costs are covered in the jet ski dock cost guide and the swim platform guide. How our system compares to other modular docks is in the dock comparison. To ask about a specific address, use the contact page.
Tell us where you are and what you want to build and we will tell you what applies before you order.