Piling Services in South Florida

Two different jobs share one name. A piling that is still soundly embedded and has only lost section at the waterline can often be restored in place. A piling that has lost its hold in the bottom has to be replaced. Grip below the mudline decides it, not how bad the wood looks from above.

The mechanism is plain enough to state without an expert. A piling either never reached firm material when it was driven, or it was driven properly and later lost bearing: the bottom scoured out from around it, decay ate the section at or below the waterline, or a storm pushed it sideways. Bearing that is gone cannot be put back by working on the part of the pile you can reach.

Federal guidance takes the same fork. Where erosion and scour are the concern, FEMA's mitigation advice for coastal facilities is to install deeper piles — either replacing the damaged or deteriorated pile, or sistering a new pile alongside an existing one that is still in good condition. [fema.gov]

SnapJacket is the restoration side, and the restoration side is real work with real engineering behind it. The same FEMA fact sheet lists jacket encasement as a measure for aging timber piles showing decay and concrete piles showing cracking and spalling: a jacket, an internal reinforcing layer and a grout infill that prevents further weakening and also reinforces the pile. [fema.gov]

The Forest Products Laboratory describes why the jacket also stops the biology: properly applied, jacketing kills borers that are already established in the pile by creating stagnant water and dropping the oxygen level in the water touching the wood. [research.fs.usda.gov]

SnapJacket's distributor publishes the product end of it — a UV-protected vinyl sleeve designed to be retrofitted without disturbing the structure above, filled with concrete that kills marine boring organisms and creates a new solid piling, and able, engineered correctly, to restore even completely broken pilings beyond their original strength. That is what our SnapJacket page says, and nothing here walks it back. [buildingproductsplus.com]

So the line between the two jobs is not strength. It is ground. A jacket restores section — the material that has been eaten, cracked or broken away — and where the pile is still soundly in the bottom it can bring that pile back to full strength where it stands. What a jacket does not do is put depth back. A pile that has lost embedment rather than section — scoured out at the base, snapped below the mudline, leaning — needs a pile that reaches firm material again, and that is a replacement. Section is a jacket job. Embedment is a driving job. One dock often has both, and the inspection is what decides which case a given pile is. We do not publish a figure for how often it turns out to be one or the other, because we do not have one.

Shipworms are not worms. UF/IFAS Extension describes a type of clam that bores into wood with two shells, leaving burrows from 7 inches to over 6 feet long and making dock pilings less stable. [blogs.ifas.ufl.edu]

The Forest Products Laboratory is blunter about what that looks like from the dock. A shipworm's entrance hole is never enlarged, so the interior of the wood may be completely honeycombed and ruined while the surface shows only slight perforations. The pile you are standing on can be a shell. [research.fs.usda.gov]

Limnoria, the gribbles, work the other way, from the outside in. They bore shallow burrows, water erosion strips away the thin walls between them, and because that erosion is greatest between tide levels, a heavily attacked pile wears to an hourglass shape in exactly that band. [research.fs.usda.gov]

Treatment helps, and it is not immunity. The Forest Products Laboratory notes that creosote gives complete protection in northern waters but may be vulnerable to a species of Limnoria in warmer water on both coasts, and that chromated copper arsenate protects against Limnoria while treated wood in southern waters is sometimes attacked by Martesia or Sphaeroma instead. [research.fs.usda.gov]

Florida Sea Grant's bulletin on wood-boring animals in Florida gives the local version of the same point: Limnoria shows a distinct tolerance to standard creosote treatments, Sphaeroma is quite tolerant of chromated copper arsenate, and Florida's water temperature never gets cold enough to kill or severely retard the activities of wood borers. There is no off-season here. [repository.library.noaa.gov]

Scour is the other half, and it is the half that decides between restoring and replacing. FEMA's coastal-facility guidance treats erosion and scour as the case for deeper piles, and for retrofitting the bottom of piles — the pile toes — with scour protection to shield against soil being undermined by storm waves. A storm or a prop wash that pulls sand out from the base leaves a pile that is still the right pile and no longer in the right amount of ground. [fema.gov]

Storms also work upward. FEMA's retrofit list for piers includes reinforcing the deck frame, deck and superstructure against wave uplift, splash, high winds and flooding, and notes that grates which relieve uplift pressure may be feasible instead of solid deck panels. Solid decking gives rising water something to push against, and the pilings take that push through every connection. [fema.gov]

Hardware fails on its own schedule. Viance, which develops wood preservatives, warns that electro-galvanized, G-90 and G-60 fasteners were designed for the old CCA preservative and will not hold up in ACQ or CA treated wood, recommends Type 316 stainless or higher for exposure to salt or saltwater, and says not to mix metals: stainless fasteners with stainless connectors, galvanized with galvanized. [treatedwood.com]

• A lean, or a wobble you feel as you walk past the pile or step onto the lift.
• Necking at the waterline: the pile worn into an hourglass in the band between tide levels, where the water does the most work. [research.fs.usda.gov]
• Soft or spongy wood anywhere you can reach it, at the cap or in the first few inches under the deck. What you cannot reach is the part that matters most, which is why the underwater look comes next.
• Rust weeping from bolts, or a bracket that has pulled a dimple into the wood.
• A dock corner that has dropped, or a gap opening between pile and stringer.
• A lift that racks or binds when the cables and motor check out.
• After a storm: a pile standing higher or lower than its neighbors, or a scour hole at the base.

Supplier, agency and industry figures, not a service life we promise on your dock.

There are three ways to get a pile into the bottom and they are usually used together. An impact hammer drives it with repeated blows. A vibratory hammer shakes the soil resistance down. Water jets erode the soil so the pile can move. Florida DOT's structures specification treats jetting as a penetration aid rather than a method of its own: where conditions warrant, jet the hole first, place the pile in it, then drive the pile to secure the last few feet of penetration — and judge the pile's bearing only from the driving after the jets are withdrawn. [fdot.gov]

The same specification holds the line on the end of the drive. A vibratory hammer may be used to get a steel bearing pile started, but a power impact hammer does the last 15 feet or more, because that is the part that measures bearing, and vibratory hammers are not to be used to install concrete piles at all. Those are highway rules on highway structures, not residential ones, but the principle carries to a canal dock: the end of the drive, not the start, is what tells you the pile is in. [fdot.gov]

Access on a canal is usually from the water. Langley's published equipment includes crane barges and work barges for sites that cannot be reached by land, which is how the crew, the pilings and the gear get to a dock line without anything crossing the yard.

Before the old pile comes out, whatever it was holding up has to be held by something else. On a pile that stands clear, that means temporary support under the stringer while the old pile is cut and pulled and the new one goes in. Where pulling it would disturb more than it is worth, the alternative is to leave it in the ground and drive a new pile beside it, transferring the load across — the sistering described in the FEMA guidance above. Which of the two we use is a site decision, made after someone has looked at the pile, and not a rule we apply in advance.

When the pile carries a lift, the job gets bigger. The boat comes out, the lift comes off the pile or is supported clear of it, and the replacement is sized for what it will carry, because a pile under a loaded cradle is not specified like a pile under a walkway.

If the dock around the pile is also at the end of its life, the honest conversation is dock construction, not piling by piling.

A lift puts the boat's full wet weight onto a few points and cycles that load every time you use it, so a pile that is adequate under a walkway is not automatically adequate under a loaded cradle. If a lift racks or binds and the cables and motor check out, look at the pilings next. Langley works with boatlift manufacturers on the lift and handles the structural side. Upkeep on the hardware sits under boat lift maintenance.

Florida Administrative Code 62-330.051(5)(a) lists as exempt the installation or repair of pilings and dolphins associated with private docking facilities or piers that are exempt under Section 403.813(1)(b), F.S. Subsection (5)(d) covers replacement or repair of existing docks and piers, mooring piles included, where the structure is still functional or was rendered non-functional within the last year by a discrete event. [law.cornell.edu]

Exempt from the state permit is not exempt from everything, and the statute behind the exemption says so in its own first sentence: Section 403.813(1), F.S., does not relieve an applicant from complying with applicable local pollution control programs or other requirements of county and municipal governments. [leg.state.fl.us]

In Miami-Dade that is concrete. A Class I Permit is required prior to performing any work in, on, over or upon tidal waters or coastal wetlands of Miami-Dade County or of any of the municipalities located within it. [miamidade.gov]

Steps by county are in our dock permit guide, city detail under our locations.

FEMA's maintenance guidance for coastal facilities is a loop rather than a date. Identify the components at risk and their baseline condition, monitor for changes, then inspect after storms, at regular intervals — the example given is every two years — and after any report of accidental damage, using on-site measurement for what is reachable and underwater inspection for the submerged elements. [fema.gov]

On a private dock in warm Florida salt water we look sooner than that, because the borers do not stop: once a year, and again after any named storm. That is what we recommend, not a rule anyone publishes.

Above water you can do the first pass yourself. Embedment is the part you cannot judge from the dock, and embedment is what separates a restoration from a replacement, so the underwater look is what actually decides the job. Our guide to how long dock pilings last covers the months in between, and dock repair after a hurricane covers the storm case. Langley replies within 24 business hours: tell us which pile.