Waterfront Projects Done Right
Trent Hollis · June 26, 2026
Hurricane season along the Gulf reminds boat owners of something basic and hard to ignore: a hull fouled with growth becomes a liability. What starts as a thin slime coat thickens into weed and barnacle buildup that slows your boat, burns extra fuel, and eventually puts stress on your engine and steering systems. For twenty … Read more
Trent Hollis · June 26, 2026
Right now, kneeling beside a section of piling I’m examining, I can see the spiral fractures running down the grain — the telltale signature of ice damage that nobody prepares for until it’s too late. Back in 2011, when an unusually harsh freeze gripped the Panhandle, I watched a client’s treated pine pilings split straight … Read more
Trent Hollis · June 25, 2026A marine contractor will quote you $3,000 to $5,000 for pre-storm dock reinforcement on Lake Monroe. That same work—anchoring, bracing, fastener replacement—runs $300 to $800 if you handle it yourself on a Saturday morning. The gap isn’t about complexity; it’s about knowing which three or four interventions actually matter, and which don’t. I spent two … Read more
Trent Hollis · June 25, 2026
Most waterfront property owners operate under a fundamental misunderstanding: they believe that freezing temperatures pose minimal risk to dock equipment because they live on the Gulf Coast, not in Minnesota. This assumption is dead wrong. Ice doesn’t need weeks of subfreezing weather to inflict serious damage — it needs only one hard overnight freeze, the … Read more
Trent Hollis · June 25, 2026Mixing incompatible metals underwater will destroy your fasteners in months—and once they fail, everything holding your dock together fails with them. That lesson came home to me in September 2017 when Hurricane Irma forced me to drive to Estero, Florida to assess a 40-foot residential dock that the owner had secured with standard rope and … Read more
Trent Hollis · June 24, 2026
You’ll see two seawalls on the same street that tell completely different stories — one looks solid after a dozen years, the other is crumbling after five. The difference almost never comes down to material or the original builder’s skill. It comes down to whether someone made the right call about fixing what was broken … Read more
Trent Hollis · June 24, 2026
Three winters back, I got a call from a property owner near Pensacola whose dock had just taken serious structural damage from a hard freeze. Three of his pressure-treated pilings had split lengthwise — pilings I’d installed myself almost a decade prior. He’d gone back and forth on whether to install ice protection for two … Read more
Trent Hollis · June 23, 2026
Plenty of waterfront property owners operate under the assumption that “seawall” and “bulkhead” are interchangeable terms — just different names for the same structure. After a storm season or two, that misunderstanding shows its teeth. I’ve driven out to properties where owners spent years repairing the wrong way, applying maintenance strategies that were never going … Read more
Trent Hollis · June 23, 2026
When I inspect a seawall, the first thing I check is whether water’s actively weeping from the face—or whether the concrete’s bulging where it shouldn’t be. That bowing tells me everything. Back in Pensacola, a homeowner called convinced his wall was failing structurally. What he actually had was years of trapped hydrostatic pressure with nowhere … Read more
Trent Hollis · June 23, 2026
Most waterfront owners believe that cosmetic crack repair requires a contractor’s involvement — and that’s where the real money bleeds away. Let me flip that: many seawall cracks you see won’t fail structurally, and misconceptions about their severity push people toward six-figure replacements they don’t need. A concrete cap that’s cracked on the surface doesn’t … Read more