Dock & Piling Cleaning in Ocean Ridge, FL

Inlet current does two things to an Ocean Ridge dock: it scours the pilings, and it keeps the water salty enough that oysters and barnacles grow on them all year.

Water makes up 57% of Ocean Ridge's 1.75 square miles, and the county's work on the inlet shapes what happens at the docks: the sand trap is dredged about every 6 years, the February-to-April 2025 dredge removed more than 55,000 cubic yards, and the sand transfer plant bypasses sand to the beaches south of the inlet. The marked inlet channel is excluded from the Lantana-to-Boynton slow zone, so boats run through it at speed and slow down at the Intracoastal. A dock near that channel takes scour that a Tropic Isle dock never sees.

An Ocean Ridge dock takes what an inlet gives: current that scours the pilings, full-strength salt that grows oysters and barnacles all year, and sand that moves with the county's dredging cycle. The multi-point inspection after cleaning looks for scour at the mud line as well as shipworm bores above it, and a wooden piling found going is wrapped or sleeved with a Snap Jacket in place. Lifts on these deep-water lots get their hardware cleared The diver works the dock at slack water, which is our scheduling problem rather than the owner's.

An Ocean Ridge dock is booked with the street and a note on how close it sits to the inlet, because the diver times inlet-side docks to slack water and the town's calmer Intracoastal docks to whenever suits. A piling count and the lift type go on the booking too. Ocean Inlet Park's day slips are the county's; the private docks along the west side of the island are the owners', and those are the ones we clean.

Ocean Ridge docks stand on the Intracoastal Waterway and the Lake Worth Lagoon. ZIP code 33435: 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