Dock & Piling Cleaning in Hallandale Beach, FL

A Golden Isles dock sits between man-made islands with no wake and no current to speak of. Oysters coat the pilings and; shipworms bore into wood and concrete both.

Three Islands Boulevard addresses are in 33009, and the city marina at number 101 is the only public dockage in Hallandale Beach; everything else is private. Golden Isles is islands joined by canals where all but a handful of the roughly 300 properties are on the water, and its docks were built when the land was still in Miami-Dade. A dock that old, on still canal water, is where the multi-point inspection earns its keep: the diver looks for shipworm holes and hollow wood once the oysters are off, and tells you which pilings to wrap and which to sleeve.

In Golden Isles nearly every home is on a canal and nearly every canal lot has a dock, so a Hallandale dock visit is usually one owner, one dock, one boat. Docks here were built when the land was still Miami-Dade, and a wooden piling that old has had decades of oysters hiding its condition; the multi-point inspection after cleaning is where the owner learns whether it is sound, wrappable, or a Snap Jacket job. Lifts and floating docks in the canals get their wheels and hardware cleared in the same visit.

The city marina's 26 annual slips are city structures, so a boat there is cleaned and the marina keeps its pilings. The 17-foot bridge beside the marina limits the boats, not the diver.

Hallandale Beach docks stand on the Intracoastal Waterway and the Three Islands Waterway, most of them behind homes in Golden Isles and on Three Islands. ZIP code 33009: 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