A finished seawall cap, dock and boat lift at a waterfront home at sunset

Marine contractor / Sarasota, Manatee, Charlotte

The part that fails
is the part you
cannot see.

A seawall is not a wall. It is a retaining system, and it fails from the backfill outward while the cap still looks perfect. We build the whole system, with sealed drawings, and we close the permit out.

Request an estimate See how a wall is built
31Years on this coast
40k+Linear feet of wall built
900+Permits closed out
6In-house crews

Anatomy

A seawall, in the order it goes in.

Scroll and it assembles. Everything to the left of the panel is what you are actually paying for, and it is the reason two quotes for the same linear footage can be a long way apart.

Cross-section of an engineered seawall Land at the left, water at the right. From the ground up: driven sheet pile panel, tieback rod to a buried deadman anchor, filter fabric and granular backfill with weep holes, a poured concrete cap over the panel heads, and rip rap protecting the toe of the wall. EXISTING GRADE MEAN HIGH WATER EXISTING BOTTOM SHEET PILE PANEL EMBEDMENT PER SOILS REPORT DEADMAN ANCHOR TIEBACK ROD WEEP HOLES FILTER FABRIC AND GRANULAR BACKFILL CONCRETE CAP CONTINUOUS REBAR RIP RAP TOE PROTECTION

  1. Existing conditions

    Survey, soundings and a look at what is already failing. Most replacements are ordered because the cap cracked, but the cap cracked because the backfill went out through the panel joints years earlier.

  2. Sheet pile driven

    Vinyl or concrete panels driven to an embedment depth set by the soils report, not by what the neighbour's wall did. The part nobody ever sees is the part carrying the load.

  3. Tiebacks and anchors

    Rods run back to a deadman anchor set well behind the active soil wedge. A wall without adequate tiebacks leans slowly and then all at once.

  4. Backfill and drainage

    Filter fabric, clean granular backfill and weep holes. Water gets out, soil stays in. Reverse those two and you have a wall on a timer.

  5. Cap and toe protection

    Cap poured with continuous rebar over the panel heads, then rip rap at the toe to kill the scour that undermines everything above it.

What we build

Waterfront structures, and the permits to go with them.

Seawalls

New construction and replacement in concrete or vinyl sheet pile, engineered to the site rather than to a catalogue. Cap, tiebacks, filter fabric and drainage detailed as one system, because that is how they fail.

Docks and boat houses

Fixed, floating and cantilever. Composite, ipe or pressure-treated framing on driven or jetted pilings, laid out around how the boat actually comes in.

Boat lifts

Four-post, elevator and cradle lifts sized to displacement rather than length, with the electrical run and bonded properly.

Rip rap and shoreline

Toe protection, revetment and living shoreline work where armouring is the wrong answer or the permit will not allow it.

Repair and storm damage

Cap repairs, panel replacement, scour remediation and the post-storm assessments insurers will actually accept.

Dredging and marine civil

Permitted maintenance dredging, pile removal, channel markers and commercial work for marinas and associations.

Permitting

Six stages, and only one of them is construction.

Owners are usually surprised by this. The build is the short part. What follows is the sequence we run on every job, in order, with nothing skipped to make a schedule look better than it is.

  1. Site visit and soundings

    We measure the water, not the plat. Bathymetry, existing structures, and the neighbours' walls, which set your tie-in elevations.

  2. Survey and engineering

    Sealed drawings from a Florida PE. County plan review will ask for them and a permit runner cannot conjure them later.

  3. Agency review

    County or municipal building department, plus state environmental review, plus the federal authorisation where the work touches navigable water.

  4. Notice to neighbours

    Riparian rights are real and adjacent owners get notice. Handled early it is paperwork. Handled late it is a stop-work order.

  5. Construction

    Barge or land based depending on access. Neighbours get told what is happening and when, which costs nothing and prevents most complaints.

  6. Final inspection and as-builts

    Signed off, closed out, and the documents handed over. An open permit is a title problem waiting for you at closing.

We do not publish turnaround times for agency review, because the queue is not ours to promise. What we control is submitting a complete package the first time.

Projects

Recent work.

Cap, dock and lift Cap, dock and liftPrivate residence, Gulf-access canal Sheet pile driven from the water Sheet pile driven from the waterBarge access, tight canal Cap tie-in and hardscape Cap tie-in and hardscapeReplacement wall, existing pool deck Barge-based replacement Barge-based replacementNo land access to the wall Rip rap toe protection Rip rap toe protectionOpen bay exposure, scour remediation Dock framing Dock framingFixed dock on driven pilings

All projects

Estimating

Send us the address and a photo of the cap.

Between the aerial, the parcel and one good photograph we can usually tell you whether you are looking at a repair or a replacement before anybody drives out.

Request an estimate (941) 555-0117