Seawall Repair on Barnegat Bay, NJ
Seawall or bulkhead, the wall along your lagoon does one job: it holds Barnegat Bay back from your yard. When it fails, the fix is the same, you rebuild the wall. Barnegat Bay Bulkhead repairs seawalls and bulkheads across the lagoon communities as a local marine construction contractor.
That matters, because a second kind of company chases the words "seawall repair" here. National foundation-repair franchises sell polyurethane foam pumped into the ground behind a wall. It is a soil product dressed up as a marine repair. It does not reset a tie-back the winter ice pulled, rebuild a scoured toe, or replace split sheathing, and those are what fail on a bay wall.
Why Foam Is Not a Seawall Repair
Injected foam can fill a void in the lawn, and for that narrow job it has a place. But a leaning seawall has lost its anchoring, a kicked-out wall has lost its toe, and a split wall has lost its face. Foam does none of that structural work. Pump it behind a wall that is already moving and you have hidden the symptom for a season while the bay finds the same weakness again. A wall problem is fixed at the wall.
How We Repair a Seawall
We fix the cause, in order. A leaning wall gets new tie-backs and deadmen in stable ground. A scoured toe gets rebuilt so the wall stands on something. A failed face gets new sheet pile spliced on the wall's line. A drained yard gets refilled, compacted, and capped. Done in that order the repair holds through the bay's winters and storms.
The Cap and the Continuous Run
A cracked cap is usually the first thing a homeowner sees, and it is a message from the wall below. We find out why the cap moved before we pour a new one, and we tie any new work into the neighbors' walls so the lagoon run stays continuous. A repair that steps or leaves a gap fails at the joint first.
Local, Licensed, and on the Bay
We are licensed and insured in New Jersey, we work these lagoons every week, and we handle the NJDEP side of what we build. We are not a dealer for a national injection brand and we do not sub the marine work out to one. When you call, the people who look at your wall are the people who fix it.
Been told your seawall needs injection? Call (732) 555-0164 for a second look from a marine contractor who will tell you what the wall actually needs.
Is a seawall the same as a bulkhead on the bay?
On Barnegat Bay people use both words for the same lagoon wall: a vertical retaining wall at the water's edge that holds the fill back from the bay. Strictly, a seawall is a heavier wall built to take wave energy on open water and a bulkhead is a retaining wall in more protected water, and most of what lines these lagoons is a bulkhead. We repair either the same way, by fixing the face, the anchors, the toe, and the soil behind them.
A contractor told me my seawall needs foam injection. Is that right?
Be careful. Foundation-repair franchises push polyurethane foam injected behind a wall as a seawall fix. Foam can fill a void in the yard, but it does not reset a tie-back the ice or a storm pulled, rebuild a scoured toe, or replace split sheathing. On a bay wall the failure is structural and the fix is structural. We rebuild the wall so it holds through the next winter and the next storm, not just until the next high tide.
My seawall cap is cracked and dropping. What does that mean?
The wall under it is moving. The cap ties the top of the wall together, and a cap that is cracking, spalling, or dropping at one end is a signal that a tie-back has let go or a section is settling. We find out why the cap moved before we pour a new one, so we are fixing the wall and not just replacing the lid over a wall that keeps sinking.
Can you repair a section without redoing the whole wall?
Yes, when the rest of the wall is sound. We splice new sheet pile into an existing run, tie new anchors into the old system, and match the cap to the line of the wall so the repair reads as one structure. On a lagoon the wall runs continuously between neighbors, so we hold the alignment and tie the new work in properly rather than leaving a step for the bay to work at.