Boat Lifts & Accessories in Meredith, NH

On This Shoreline

Boat Lifts & Accessories in Meredith

Water: Winnipesaukee, Waukewan, Pemigewasset Lake · Belknap County

The Neck is where Meredith’s lifts concentrate, and the typical set-up there has grown one piece at a time: a runabout on a lift, a jet ski on a lift of its own beside the dock, a canopy over the boat, and a space on the far side for a guest to tie up. Each addition looks small. NHDES does not count them as small. It requires a wetlands permit for every boat lift and jet-ski lift, seasonal or permanent, and it treats one lift as equivalent to a single boat slip. Frontage governs how many slips a property may have — 75 feet carries up to 2, and each additional slip or securing location needs a further 75 feet. So that familiar arrangement is three slips, and three slips need 150 feet of frontage before anyone discusses the hardware.

Then Meredith’s geography splits the rules in two. Winnipesaukee is the only water in New Hampshire over 10,000 acres, so a slip on Meredith Bay or the Neck is defined as 25 feet by 8 feet by 3 feet. On Waukewan and Pemigewasset Lake it is 20 by 6 by 3. The canopy limit follows the 1,000-acre line rather than the 10,000-acre one, but it lands in the same place: a new canopy stays in the simplest permit class at up to 14 feet by 30 feet on Winnipesaukee and only 12 feet by 25 feet on the two smaller lakes. Plenty of Meredith families own frontage on more than one of these waters, and a canopy that fits the Bay house is not automatically one you can carry over to camp.

Meredith Bay adds a condition of its own. It is busy summer water, and a canopy must not obstruct the lines of sight needed for navigation — a real consideration where docks sit close together and boats are constantly coming and going past them. It is also where a lift pays for itself fastest, because a hull lifted clear of the water is a hull the Bay’s steady wake is no longer working on.

A Lift Needs a Legal Slip to Sit In

The rules say where a lift may go, and it is not wherever there is room. A watercraft lift must be installed in an existing legal boat slip, or, for a personal watercraft lift, immediately adjacent to an existing legal docking structure. On a shoreline with as much old, unpermitted cribwork as Meredith’s, that word “legal” carries the whole project: the lift inherits whatever is unresolved about the dock beside it. Get it right and it is the easiest permit in the book — a project limited to installing seasonal lifts within legally existing slips is a minimum impact project, the lowest of NHDES’s three classes. Add a slip at the same time and you are counting again: a seasonal project stays minimum impact only with no more than 2 slips including any that already exist, and up to 4 slips on no more than 100 feet of waterfront is a minor project.

Canopies are seasonal by rule, whatever they are attached to. Only seasonal canopies may be permitted. Frame and cover must be readily removable at the end of the boating season, go up after ice-out and come down before ice-in. A canopy can never justify new permanent pilings, but an existing legal permanent structure may carry a seasonal canopy frame — so an old legal crib on the Neck can be put to work holding one, while a pipe dock on Waukewan needs a frame that comes out completely with everything else.

On the two smaller lakes, depth decides where the lift can go — and you cannot dig for it. A slip is measured to 3 feet of depth at normal high water. Sediment dredging can be permitted only in and around existing legal fixed structures that cannot easily be modified to reach the necessary depth, and on Waukewan and Pemigewasset Lake every new dock is seasonal, capped at a standard 6 feet by 30 feet. So the lift goes where usable depth already is, within reach of a dock that size. The one concession is rock: a rock may be relocated by permit if it lies within a boat slip or its approach and within 3 feet of the surface. We measure all of this at the frontage before anyone buys a lift. NHDES administers the rules and is the authority; this is orientation rather than legal advice.

A boat lift supplied and installed runs $4,000–$12,000 by capacity; most Waukewan and Pemigewasset jobs sit in the lower half, because the slip they go into is smaller and so are the boats. Canopies run $2,200–$6,000, and on Winnipesaukee frontage the top of that range buys the larger 14 by 30 foot size the water allows. Lifts, canopies and the dock come out in a single visit, which on the Neck is usually where the saving is.

• Every lift and securing location counted against the frontage before anything is ordered
• Lift placed only in a legal slip — status established first on older cribwork
• Slip depth checked against normal high water, not the day of the visit
• Canopy sized to the water: 14 by 30 ft on Winnipesaukee, 12 by 25 ft on Waukewan and Pemigewasset
• Canopy frame and cover out before ice-in, every season
• Canopy placed clear of navigation sightlines on busy Meredith Bay frontage

Straight Answers

Dock Questions in Meredith

We want to add a jet-ski lift beside our dock on the Neck. Isn’t that just an accessory?

Not in NHDES’s terms. A wetlands permit is required for all boat lifts and jet-ski lifts, and NHDES treats one lift as equivalent to a single boat slip. A personal watercraft lift must sit immediately adjacent to an existing legal docking structure. Then count: 75 feet of frontage carries up to 2 slips, and each additional slip or securing location needs a further 75 feet. If the dock already holds a boat lift and a space for a second boat, the jet-ski lift is your third slip.

Can we move our canopy from the Meredith Bay house to our camp on Waukewan?

Check the size first. A new canopy is a minimum impact project if it is the only canopy on the frontage and measures no more than 14 feet by 30 feet on waters of 1,000 acres or larger, but only 12 feet by 25 feet on smaller waters. Winnipesaukee is on the larger side of that line and Waukewan is not. A canopy over 12 by 25 is not prohibited on Waukewan, but it falls out of the simplest class and is classified with the dock it is attached to.

Our old crib has a slip that would take a lift. Do we still need a permit?

Yes — every lift needs one. The good news is that a project limited to installing seasonal lifts within legally existing boat slips is a minimum impact project, the simplest class there is. The catch is the word legally. A lift must go in an existing legal slip, so on an older Meredith crib the status of the dock has to be established first. If it is legally existing, the lift is the easy part.

Do we need a permit for a swim raft off our Pemigewasset Lake beach?

Not the wetlands permit. NHDES states that swim rafts and moorings do not require it. A raft is still regulated, though — installing one must comply with the state laws and rules adopted by the Department of Safety, which runs the mooring program. The lift is the opposite case: it is outside the Department of Safety’s territory and squarely inside NHDES’s.

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Lifts & Accessories Near Meredith

• Center Harbor
• Holderness
• Ashland
• Moultonborough
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• Laconia