Adding oak in Carboy

I am currently making a sour golden Belgian that I will be aging in secondary with oak chips soaked in chardonnay. I initially fermented with sacc. and now will rack to secondary (5g glass carboy), sour with JP bottle dregs, and add soaked oak chips.
In the past I have added oak to other brews, but only in a plastic bucket. I have always put the oak in a grain bag with a weight to keep it submerged.
Is it necessary to keep the oak submerged or can I just drop in the loose oak chips? Will it interfere with a pellicle to have oak chips floating on the surfance? Otherwise how do I get the oak through the neck of the carboy?

It can be tough to get them into the bottle neck but once you do that I wouldn't worry about them floating. Just don't over due it with the oak, its easy to do.

I'd use a funnel to get the chips in there. When I've done oaked beers in the past it's always been in a bucket. My thoughts were that it would be easier to clean. I'm curious about the pellicle hopefully someone's got an answer.

When I use oak cubes they eventually sink...however, I use them seldom so that is based off limited knowledge, but I did just bottle the other day and all the cubes were chilling in the trub. I imagine chips would sink too, but have no experience with the chip form. Anyway, if they do sink they will likely do so before your pellicle forms. Everything I read is that chips are a lot more potent than cubes so +1 to breez7 for what its worth.

Are you going for a "Temptation" style with the chardonnay?

Yes, going for something like Tempatation, but more gentle so I used the sacc first. Temptation seemed pretty heavily oaked, so I planned on using 4 oz of light toast chips and just leaving them for the duration of aging, ~1 year.

I used some oak chips in a blackberry wine and they sunk pretty quickly. I used 7g of medium toast American oak in 1 gal of blackberry wine and it was pretty potent so I'm not sure 4 oz would be a good idea. I'd hold off a little as you could always add more in the future.

Oak is one of those things that depends. If it is new oak you are using 4 ounces will be over kill. The barrels used by brewers (RR included) are spent oak barrels, meaning they will add very little oak character. However, that doesn't mean they don't still add phenols that give excellent mouth feel. As well a lot of the character from oak barrels is due to the aging process of the wood. If your wood chips are just wood chips that have been charred it won't be the same.

I guess I will reduce my original plan to use 2 ounces of new oak and will just drop the soaked chips in loose. I figure worst case scenario it is over oaked initially and should fade with additional bottle aging.

I originally was going to use all 4 ounces because I also have a cider going now that has been on 2 ounces of oak cubes for 3 months now and it is nearly undetectable.

Remember that those french wines that take 10 years to start tasting good and really come into there own over 20 years is because of tannins. So, if you go overboard it might turn into a nice beer to present you baby at their 21st birthday . You might consider boiling the oak first to reduce the oakiness impact. I'm guessing you would still benefit from mouthfeel aspects of more oak while minimizing the flavor problem by doing so, but that would be an area for further study as I'm making an assumption there.

BTW, I oak with less than an ounce per 5 gallons.

When I do oak it's usually in a bigger beer like a double IPA or specialty stout but I like two ounces per five gallons. Comes out pretty nice for me.