Licensed & Insured Marine Contractors · Miami-Dade County
Miami Seawall Repair, Done Right the First Time
Cracked cap? Sinking yard? Leaning wall? We diagnose the real cause, handle your DERM permits, and repair your seawall with methods built for South Florida's saltwater, king tides, and hurricanes — at a fraction of replacement cost.
Get a Free Seawall Inspection & Quote
Fast response — usually within the hour during business hours.
What We Do
Complete Seawall & Marine Construction Services
One licensed team for everything your waterfront needs — from a hairline crack today to a brand-new engineered seawall built to Miami-Dade's current elevation standards.
Seawall Repair
Structural repairs for cracked, leaning, or eroding seawalls — foam injection, tiebacks, joint sealing, and more.
Learn more →Seawall Construction
New engineered seawalls — concrete, vinyl, and hybrid systems built to Miami-Dade's current elevation code.
Learn more →Seawall Replacement
Complete seawall rebuilds when repair is no longer economical — engineered and permitted to current standards.
Learn more →Seawall Inspection
Complete condition assessments — above and below the waterline — with written reports for owners, buyers, and insurers.
Learn more →Seawall Cap Repair
Cracked or crumbling seawall caps restored with chloride-resistant concrete — often on the county's ~10-day expedited permit track.
Learn more →Erosion Control & Soil Stabilization
One-day polyurethane foam injection fills voids and stops soil loss behind seawalls — no excavation, lawn stays intact.
Learn more →Rip Rap Installation
Engineered rock revetments and toe protection — required by state law in Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve seawall projects.
Learn more →Dock & Pier Repair
Piling replacement, decking, stringers, and boat lift structures — saltwater and marine borer damage repaired.
Learn more →Emergency Seawall Repair
24/7 response for active seawall failures — collapses, storm damage, and rapid soil washout stabilized fast.
Learn more →Every Seawall Service, Explained
Seawall work isn't one trade — it's a family of them, and knowing which one your wall actually needs is half the money. Here's what each service involves, when it's the right call, and what to expect.
🧱 Seawall Repair
The workhorse service — and the one most Miami waterfront owners actually need, even when they fear the worst. Cracked panels, open joints, rust staining, a section starting to lean: if the wall's structural panels are fundamentally sound, targeted repair restores it for 50–75% less than replacement. Our approach is cause-first: we identify why the wall is deteriorating — failed tiebacks, toe scour, drainage collapse — and fix that, not just the visible symptom. Patching a crack while the tide keeps pumping soil through a failed joint is how owners end up paying for the same repair twice.
🔍 Seawall Inspection
Every good outcome starts here, because the surfaces that decide a seawall's fate — the toe, the submerged panel faces, the backfill behind the wall — are invisible from the patio. Our inspections cover above the waterline, below it, and behind the wall (systematic void probing), and produce a written, photo-documented report with severity rankings and budget ranges. Waterfront buyers should treat a pre-purchase seawall inspection as non-negotiable: it's routinely the largest uninspected liability in a Miami real estate transaction, and a standard home inspection does not touch it.
💧 Erosion Control & Soil Stabilization
South Florida's signature seawall problem isn't the wall — it's the yard behind it. Our porous limestone lets tidal water work behind walls twice a day, and any failed joint or clogged weep hole becomes a soil pump: grains leave with every ebb tide until a void opens under your lawn, pavers, or pool deck. The modern fix ispolyurethane foam injection — dime-sized ports, a marine-grade foam that expands to fill the void and bind loose soil, most projects finished in a single day with the landscaping intact. We pair it with joint sealing and weep-hole restoration so the soil that stays put this time, stays put for good.
🛠️ Seawall Cap Repair
The cap — the concrete beam running along the top of your wall — is structural, not cosmetic: it ties individual panels into one system and usually anchors the tiebacks. In Miami's salt air, caps fail from the inside out: chlorides reach the rebar, the steel corrodes and expands, and the concrete cracks and spalls. We repair sectionally or re-pour completely with chloride-resistant mixes, typically in3–7 days. Bonus every owner should know: cap repair with approved structural plans qualifies for Miami-Dade'sExpedited Administrative Authorization — roughly 10-day permitting instead of months.
🏗️ Seawall Construction
New walls are built for the bay of 2060, not the bay of 1980 — because the code now requires it. Miami-Dade's minimum crest elevation of 6.0 ft NAVD88 is engineered around two feet of projected sea level rise, and municipalities like Miami Beach layer their own ordinances on top. We design and build concrete panel, vinyl sheet pile, and hybrid king-pile systems to those standards — engineering, soils, drainage, and the full permit stack included — with construction typically running 3–8 weeks. On Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve shorelines, riprap is integrated from the first drawing, because state law requires it.
🔄 Seawall Replacement
Some walls are genuinely done — panels failed across long sections, steel consumed by decades of salt water, or a crest so far below today's king tides that repairing it means investing in a structure the water has already outgrown. When that's the honest diagnosis, we replace: demolition, new sheet piles or panels driven to modern embedment depths, new tiebacks, engineered drainage, and a code-height cap. And when it isn't the honest diagnosis, we say that instead — we price repair and replacement separately whenever both are viable, so the decision is yours with real numbers on the table.
🪨 Rip Rap Installation
Engineered rock is the oldest shoreline protection there is and the only one with an indefinite lifespan — it can't corrode, can't spall, and repairs by being put back. It's also the material Florida lawrequires in new and replacement seawalls within the Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve, which covers most of the county's open-bay shoreline. We build standalone riprap revetments, living-shoreline pairings with native vegetation, and toe-protection installations that stop the scour quietly undermining vertical walls on wake-heavy water.
⚓ Dock & Pier Repair
Your dock lives in the same brutal water as your seawall — plus marine borers hollowing out wooden pilings from the inside and a boat lift's point loads testing whatever strength remains. We replace and jacket pilings, restore stringers and decking, and assess dock and seawall together, because the structures share soil, share exposure, and share mobilization costs: bundling the work routinely saves 20–30% versus two separate projects.
🚨 Emergency Seawall Repair
When a wall is actively failing — a collapsed section, soil washing out visibly, a sinkhole opening beside the pool after a storm — every tide cycle compounds the damage. We answer 24/7, stabilize first (shoring, temporary sheeting, rapid void filling), and document everything from the first hour, because day-one records are what insurance claims are won with. Then the permanent repair proceeds deliberately, without a crisis clock running.
One licensed team, one coordinated permit package, one accountable point of contact — from the first inspection to the final walkthrough. Not sure which service your wall needs? That's exactly what thefree inspection answers.
Why It Matters
Your Seawall Is the Only Thing Between Your Property and Biscayne Bay
South Florida seawalls fail differently than seawalls anywhere else, and understanding the local failure modes is the difference between a two-day repair and a six-figure rebuild. Start with the chemistry: warm salt water drives chlorides through porous concrete to the steel reinforcement inside, where corrosion expands the rebar to several times its volume and cracks the concrete from within — thespalling cycle behind the rust stains and crumbling caps you see on every older canal in the county.
Then the geology: Miami sits on oolitic limestone so porous that tidal water moves through the ground itself, working behind your wall twice a day. Give that tide any unfiltered path — a failed joint, a crack below the waterline, a clogged weep hole — and it carries backfill soil out grain by grain until avoid opens under your lawn, pavers, or pool deck. And then the calendar: every fall,king tidesovertop the county's lowest walls and saturate their backfill, while every hurricane season stress-tests whatever weaknesses the year has accumulated. Surge doesn't create failures so much as collect on deferred ones.
The good news: caught early, most failures are repairable in days — not weeks — using foam injection, helical tiebacks, and cap restoration, at 50–75% less than replacement cost. The entire game is catching them early, which is why our inspections are free.
Our Process
- Free inspection — we assess the wall above and below the waterline and check for hidden soil loss.
- Honest diagnosis — repair vs. replace, with real numbers for each option.
- Permits handled — DERM Class I, municipal building permits, and Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve requirements.
- Engineered repair — the least invasive method that will actually last in salt water.
- Final walkthrough — you see exactly what was done, with documentation for your records and insurance.
How We Fix It
Repair Methods Engineered for Salt Water
Every method we use is chosen for the marine environment — materials that cure wet, steel that's galvanized for salt, and concrete designed for chloride exposure. Here's the toolbox and what each tool is for.
Polyurethane Foam Injection — usually 1 day
For soil loss and voids behind the wall. Dime-sized ports are drilled through the surface and a marine-grade polyurethane is injected into the cavity, where it expands, binds loose soil into a stable mass, and seals the water paths that caused the loss. It cures in wet soil — essential in Miami, where the water table is everywhere — and reaches working strength in minutes. Lawn and landscaping stay intact.
Helical Tiebacks & Anchors — 2 to 5 days
For leaning and bowing walls. Galvanized steel anchors are driven deep into stable soil behind the wall and connected through it with heavy-duty plates, taking over the load the original tieback system has lost. Movement stops immediately; in many cases the wall can be drawn back toward plumb. This is the repair that saves walls other contractors quote for replacement.
Cap Restoration — 3 to 7 days
Deteriorated caps are repaired sectionally or re-poured end to end with chloride-resistant concrete, corrosion-treated or replaced reinforcement, and renewed tieback connections. A sound cap ties the panels back into one structural system — and the permitting is the fastest in county coastal work, via the ~10-day expedited track.
Joint Sealing, Drainage & Toe Protection — 1 to 2 days
The unglamorous work that decides whether everything else lasts: panel joints resealed with marine-grade compounds so backfill stops escaping, weep holes cleared and re-screened so hydrostatic pressure drains instead of pushing the wall over, and riprap placed at the toe where wake and scour are digging at the wall's foundation.
Where We Work
Serving Every Waterfront Community in Miami-Dade
Each city has its own permitting quirks, canal systems, and common failure patterns. We know them all — click your city for local details.
Permits Are Half the Battle. We Handle Them.
Nearly all seawall work in Miami-Dade requires aDERM Class I Coastal Permit — and if your property sits within the Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve, state rules add riprap and environmental requirements on top. Your city's building department reviews the structural plans separately.
The full stack can run four levels deep: DERM's environmental review at the county, your municipality's building department (Miami Beach adds its own seawall ordinance with a 5.7 ft NAVD minimum; the City of Miami reviews under Chapter 29), Florida Statute §258.397 inside the Aquatic Preserve — where new and replacement wallsmust incorporate riprap — and federal Army Corps jurisdiction seaward of mean high water. New and substantially rebuilt walls must also meet the county's minimum crest elevation of6.0 ft NAVD88, engineered around two feet of projected sea level rise by 2060.
We prepare and file everything as one coordinated package — and when your project qualifies for the county'sExpedited Administrative Authorization under §24-48 (cap and tieback repairs with approved structural plans), we can often have approval in about10 days instead of months. Knowing which projects qualify, and sequencing the engineering so they do, is exactly the kind of local fluency that separates marine contractors who work in Miami-Dade every week from everyone else.
Straight Numbers
What Seawall Work Costs in Miami
Nobody can price a seawall honestly without seeing below the waterline — but you deserve real market ranges before anyone visits. In Miami-Dade, most repairs run $100–$250 per linear foot, severe structural damage can reach $600, routine maintenance items run $25–$125, and permits add roughly $500–$2,000. Repair, when the wall is a candidate for it, costs50–75% less than replacement — which is why the below-waterline inspection that settles the repair-or-replace question is the highest-leverage hour in the whole process.
| Work | Typical cost | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| Joint & crack sealing | $50–$125 / ft | 1–2 days |
| Foam injection (voids) | $100–$200 / ft | 1 day |
| Cap restoration | $100–$250 / ft | 3–7 days |
| Helical tiebacks | per anchor point | 2–5 days |
| Full replacement | several × repair | 3–8 weeks |
Every quote we issue is written, itemized, and produced after an inspection — never over the phone. The complete breakdown, including every cost driver and the lowball-quote red flags to watch for, is in our 2026 Miami seawall cost guide.
Why Owners Choose Us
Built on Local Authority, Not Ad Spend
Anyone can buy the top ad slot. Authority has to be earned the slow way — by knowing this county's water, geology, and government better than anyone else working in it. That's the standard we hold ourselves to, and it shows up in the details:
- Licensed & insured Florida marine contractors — and we encourage you to verify every license at myfloridalicense.com; our contractor vetting guide shows you exactly how.
- Cause-first diagnosis — we probe behind the wall and inspect below the waterline before quoting, because symptom repairs are how owners pay twice.
- Permit fluency as a core service — DERM Class I, the §24-48 expedited track, Aquatic Preserve riprap rules, fourteen municipalities' building departments. We wrotethe guideon it, literally.
- Honest repair-vs-replace math — both options priced separately whenever both are viable, with our reasoning in writing.
- Education before the sale — ourresource library covers costs, warning signs, materials, king tides, and responsibility law in more depth than any competitor in the market, free, no email gate.