Dock Winterization & Freeze Protection

You’ll hear this one at the marina bar more often than you’d think: “Just drain the water and kill the breaker — that’s all winterizing amounts to.” It’s fast advice, it sounds reasonable, and it lands you with $4,000 in repairs come April. Salt water finds its way into every space you leave unprotected. Corrosion … Read more

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

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

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