Dock & Piling Cleaning in Pompano Beach, FL

Harbor Village canals were platted for docks in the 1950s, so a lot of Pompano pilings are old wood that oysters have been eating for decades while hiding the damage.

Boat lifts and jet ski docks are common in Pompano Isles and Santa Barbara Shores, and barnacles on their wheels scrape a hull at every launch. One local wrinkle: under the city's tidal barrier code, dock or lift work on a seawall below 5 feet needs a cost analysis for raising the wall, so tell us if the dock is attached to a low wall.

Sands Harbor Resort & Marina on North Riverside Drive has about 50 slips for boats up to 120 feet and a gas and diesel fuel dock, and it sits in 33062 with the rest of waterfront east Pompano. The 1950s Harbor Village plat put a canal behind nearly every lot between the Intracoastal and US-1, and Pompano Isles did the same between Riverside Drive and the Intracoastal. Docks in those canals stand in still water that takes drainage from inland, so their pilings carry a softer, heavier growth than a Sands Harbor slip on the tidal Intracoastal; both get cleaned and inspected the same way.

Pompano's tidal barrier code reaches the dock in one specific way: dock or lift work on a seawall below 5 feet needs a cost analysis for raising the wall. Cleaning and inspecting a dock is not dock work in that sense, so a Harbor Village owner with a low wall can still have the pilings and lift cleaned and inspected every year. What the inspection finds decides the next step: a sound piling stays, a wooden piling with shipworm bores is wrapped, a warped one is sleeved with a Snap Jacket, and if the dock itself needs rebuilding the owner hears about the code before spending anything. Lake Santa Barbara docks carry the softest, heaviest growth in the city because of the canal's drainage.

Pompano Beach docks stand on the Intracoastal Waterway and Lake Santa Barbara, and in the Pompano Canal and the Cypress Creek Canal, most of them behind homes in Harbor Village, Pompano Isles and Santa Barbara Shores. ZIP codes 33060, 33062 and 33064: 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