Residential Seawall Repair

In this post I'd like focus on residential seawall repair. If you love the ocean, then living near the water can be an ideal situation most of the time. You can enjoy scenic views of the sea, easy access to the water, and gentle ocean breezes as you sit out on your deck.

But one challenge many oceanfront home owners eventually find themselves facing is leaking seawalls. You depend on seawalls to keep water on the outside and the the soil that supports your property on the inside. The seawall protecting your property is vulnerable to many degrading factors. As my colleague Andy Powell wrote in his excellent blog post Stop Erosion through Your Seawall with Polyurethane, "salt corrosion, tidal action, currents, boat wakes, storm surges and sometimes hurricanes all deliver a constant beating on the seawall."

Sometimes seawall leaks become evident through the telltale sign of unstable soil (basically, small mini-sinkholes) just inside the seawall. Observable symptoms along these lines can also be an indicator of further, unseen damage, as Andy explains in his article, "...these voids can extend below an adjacent patio, dock, or pool deck, eventually causing those structures to sink and crack."

Fortunately there's a solution! AP Fill 700 and Spetec H100 are semi-rigid hydrophobic polyurethane foams that react with moisture in the soil and expand to fill voids while they permeate the soil to form a solid, strong, watertight mass. They have been used extensively in seawall applications to seal cracks and defects, as well as fill voids and stabilize soil.

Want more information on polyurethane seawall repair?