Dock & Piling Cleaning in Boca Raton, FL

Royal Palm's canals date from 1959 and Boca Harbour's docks line the Intracoastal, and in both.

Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club's marina has a dockmaster and takes vessels up to 130 feet, and the community's own canals behind the houses hold boats not much smaller, so the lifts and pilings in Royal Palm carry real weight. Boca Harbour's roughly 325 homes on the Intracoastal and its canals off Federal Highway are the other big private-dock neighborhood, and the El Rio Canal has its own 50-foot shoreline slow zone. Building or replacing a dock falls under the city's Chapter 22 marine structures code; cleaning and inspecting one does not.

Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club docks carry boats up to the size the marina takes, so their lifts and pilings are heavy-duty and the inspection matters accordingly; Boca Harbour docks on the Intracoastal take more current. Cleaning and inspection need no permit under the city's marine structures code; rebuilding does, and the inspection tells an owner which one they are looking at. A wooden piling found hollow behind the oysters is wrapped in HDPE or sleeved with a Snap Jacket in place.

Royal Palm docks are booked with the street inside the club community; the divers call ahead and text you right before each visit. Boca Harbour docks off Federal Highway are booked the same way, and the ones directly on the Intracoastal take more current, so the diver times those to slack water. Silver Palm Park's ramps and the resort marina's slips are the city's and the resort's; a boat at either gets cleaned, and the structures stay theirs.

Boca Raton docks stand on the Intracoastal Waterway and Lake Boca Raton, in the Hillsboro Canal, and on Lake Wyman, most of them behind homes in Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club and Boca Harbour. ZIP codes 33431, 33432 and 33487: no pickaxes, no chisels, inspection included.

Growth hides damage, so the inspection follows the cleaning, while the diver can see the structure.

• Shipworm holes in wood and concrete pilings: enough of them and a piling snaps.
• Oyster damage on wooden pilings, which eats the wood while hiding it.
• Floating-dock wheels and hydro-hoist hydraulic lines, where barnacles cut and jam.
• Whether a wrap or a Snap Jacket sleeve would extend the piling's life.

How often docks and pilings need it. Seawalls and concrete pilings: cleaned annually. In our experience, unwrapped wooden pilings on South Florida canals often need help after 10 to 15 years; a wrap from the mud to 2 ft above high tide adds at least 20 years.

Full dock and piling cleaning guide