Waterfront Projects Done Right
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
Trent Hollis · June 22, 2026
Down at the marina one summer, I watched a guy’s 12-pound redfish die in a borrowed cooler when the ice gave out before weigh-in. He’d had that fish alive an hour before. It’s one of those moments that stays with you. What he needed was a functional DIY dock-mounted livewell — the kind of setup … Read more
Trent Hollis · June 22, 2026
Out on the water near Pensacola, I once watched a spinning rod valued at roughly $200 slip off a dock post and vanish into the bay. The rod holder had been fastened through a hollow aluminum post using nothing but undersized screws, no backing plate underneath, and no sealant around the holes. When a bull … Read more
Trent Hollis · June 21, 2026
Run your hand along the underside of a dock cleat in August, and you’ll feel it — that gritty orange coating, salt-locked rust bleeding down onto the wood below. That’s what happens when people rush installations, skip the depth math, and end up with a fish light mounted so poorly that the entire electrical system … Read more