By Roman Ross — Marine Construction Estimator, Shore Protect Construction
A property owner on Lake Conroe reached out with a shoreline that had run out of road: an old treated-timber bulkhead and the dock decking above it were rotting through, breaking apart, and dropping soil into the lake. The main run is about 25 feet, and with a short return onto the shore the crew builds roughly 30 linear feet of new wall. Unlike the in-front retrofits we often recommend, this failed structure sat right on the new wall line and had to come out first. Below is the full project: why this was a full tear-out-and-replace, how the new wall ties into the dock and the neighbor's bulkhead, the as-quoted materials, the phase-by-phase build, honest 2026 pricing — and why a short run like this is priced as a package, not per linear foot.
Bottom line: On Lake Conroe in 2026, a full-scope replacement of about 30 linear feet of failed timber bulkhead — demolition and haul-off, a new CCA timber wall, and 20 cubic yards of sand backfill — runs $17,275 all-in. A job this short is priced as a fixed package, not per foot: a 170-foot Lake Conroe bulkhead works out near $195 per linear foot, but on a 30-foot run the fixed mobilization, haul, and permit costs dominate the number. The new wall ties into the existing dock and the neighbor's bulkhead, with a 5-foot return onto the shore to stop corner scour.
The property is a private lakefront lot on Lake Conroe in Montgomery County, Texas. This is freshwater — Lake Conroe is a San Jacinto River Authority reservoir, so there is no tidal action and no saltwater corrosion to design around. The existing structure is an aged timber bulkhead carrying a dock deck on top of it, and it is well past serviceable: the decking boards are split and broken, there are open voids where the deck meets the bulkhead line, and the timber is cupped and gray. This is not a wall that needs a repair — it is a wall that needs to come out.
The new wall stands about 6 feet of exposed face — roughly 4 feet of water depth plus 2 feet of freeboard above the waterline. The run is short: about 25 feet of main wall, plus a 5-foot return onto the shore at one end, for roughly 30 linear feet of built wall. Two site facts shaped the bid and the schedule. First, materials have to travel about 400 feet across the lawn from the staging area to the water, so the crew works off tracked, low-ground-pressure equipment with ground protection to keep turf damage to a minimum. Second, the wall has neighbors on both ends — it meets an existing dock on one side and the adjoining property's bulkhead on the other — so the layout has to tie in cleanly rather than just run straight. We cover local market ranges on our bulkhead construction cost on Lake Conroe page; the rest of this post is what those numbers look like on a real, small-run ticket.
Our default on a leaning-but-intact bulkhead is to drive a new wall a foot or two lakeward of the old one and leave the failing structure in place — it skips demolition, saves the haul-off, and gives the new wall a quiet secondary barrier behind it. That is exactly the play we ran on a steel sheet pile bulkhead on Lake Livingston and on the larger vinyl vs wood bulkhead on Lake Conroe. This job was the exception: the old timber and its decking were breaking apart and sat directly on the line the new wall needs to occupy, so the right answer was a partial demolition and a clean rebuild. Because of that, this estimate is built around three honest stages rather than one wall price.
| Stage | What it covers | Investment |
|---|---|---|
| Demolition & Debris Removal | Partial demolition of the failed timber bulkhead and decking, plus full haul-off in a 20-yard roll-off dumpster | $1,700 |
| Bulkhead Installation | New 6 ft CCA timber wall — piles, 2x8 face boards, wale, tie-rod and deadman anchor system, geotextile, plus the dock and neighbor tie-ins and the shore return | $12,650 |
| Sand Backfill | Importing, placing, and compacting 20 cubic yards of select sand behind the new wall to a stable, flush finish | $2,925 |
| Total project | Demo + new wall + backfill, all-in | $17,275 |
Treated timber was the right material here for the same reasons it works across freshwater Texas lakes: it is cost-effective, it builds fast with a small crew, and on a sheltered lake it lasts for decades. If you want the engineering behind a bulkhead — anchored versus cantilever design and the full material matrix — our complete guide to building a waterfront bulkhead walks through it, and our wood bulkhead deep-dive covers why CCA timber holds up the way it does in freshwater.
The defining feature of this small job is not the wall itself — it is everything the wall has to connect to. A straight 30-foot run on open shoreline would be a quick build. This run has a constraint at every edge.
On one end, the new bulkhead ties directly into the existing dock, so the crew has to confirm the connection detail and work the new piles in without disturbing the dock structure. On one side it meets the neighbor's bulkhead — the walls butt up against each other, which means the property line and the shared corner get checked before any stakes go in the ground. On the opposite side, where the wall would otherwise end in open bank, it turns a 5-foot return onto the shore. That return is the cheap insurance of the whole layout: it closes off the corner so the lake cannot scour around the end of the wall and undermine it from behind, which is one of the most common ways a short bulkhead fails early.
Add the 400-foot material haul across the lawn, and the picture is clear — this is a job where the logistics and the connections, not the linear footage, drive the cost.
Below is the as-quoted material set, straight off the client estimate. Every timber component is CCA pressure-treated for continuous freshwater contact.
This is the same CCA timber system used on the timber option of our 170-foot Lake Conroe project — 6x6 piles, 2x8 face boards, and a tensioned tie-rod and deadman system — just scaled to a short run with full demolition added in front of it.
The crew is a two-man skilled marine construction team, and the work runs about 5 working days, assuming the SJRA permit is already in hand on day one. The build breaks into three phases that map directly to the three price stages.
Phase 1 — Demolition & Site Preparation. The crew mobilizes to the Lake Conroe property and stakes the new wall alignment along the failed line. A staging area is set up, and tracked low-ground-pressure equipment is brought in to move materials the roughly 400 feet across the lawn, with ground protection down to limit turf compaction. The failing section of the existing timber bulkhead and decking is partially demolished and loaded into a 20-yard roll-off dumpster for haul-off, clearing the line for the new wall.
Phase 2 — Structural Installation. The 6x6 CCA piles are driven into the lake bottom along the new alignment. The 2x8 CCA face boards are fastened to build the 6 ft exposed wall, and the 3x8 or 4x6 wale is run horizontally to tie the piles into one unit. The 3/4" galvanized tie rods are run back to the buried timber deadman anchors and tensioned so the wall is actively held rather than relying on embedment alone. In the same phase the crew makes the connections that define this job — the tie-in to the existing dock, the butt-joint to the neighbor's bulkhead, and the 5-foot return onto the shore.
Phase 3 — Protection, Backfill & Finish. Non-woven geotextile filter fabric is secured behind the full face of the wall to stop soil migration through the boards. Then 20 cubic yards of select sand are imported, placed behind the new wall, and compacted in lifts to a stable, flush grade. Construction debris is removed, equipment paths are graded back to the original lawn profile, and the crew performs a final walkthrough with the owner.
For this full-scope replacement, the quote came in at $17,275 all-in — $1,700 for demolition and haul-off, $12,650 for the new bulkhead, and $2,925 for the sand backfill. It is a flat project price covering labor, materials, equipment, the 400-foot material haul, and mobilization, with permitting coordinated separately through the SJRA. Payment is structured as a 50% deposit to schedule and reserve materials and equipment, with the balance due on completion and cleanup.
You will notice there is no price per linear foot in that breakdown, and that is deliberate. On a short run, the fixed costs — getting a crew and equipment to the site, hauling materials hundreds of feet to the water, setting up, and coordinating the permit — cost about the same as they would on a wall twice the length. Spread over 30 feet, a per-foot figure overstates the "rate" and tells you nothing useful. The honest way to quote work this size is a fixed package. For comparison, our larger 170-foot Lake Conroe bulkhead came in at $195 per linear foot precisely because those fixed costs spread across far more wall. To see where small and large runs land in the wider market, our Lake Conroe bulkhead cost page covers per-foot ranges by material, the Lake Conroe bulkhead service overview walks through what we typically deliver, and the Lake Conroe seawall cost page covers the heavier-wall option for more exposed shoreline.
The upfront price is the easy number; the more useful one is what the wall costs over a realistic ownership window. On a sheltered freshwater lake, CCA timber is a genuinely long-lived choice — there is no salt to corrode the hardware or accelerate decay — so the structural bones of this wall are built to last for decades, not years.
Lake Conroe is a San Jacinto River Authority reservoir, so any shoreline structure on it is subject to an SJRA permit, along with any applicable Montgomery County or HOA shoreline-setback rules. The realistic timeline from application to approval is 4 to 8 weeks, and the most common mistake we see is owners signing a construction contract before the permit clock has started — that loses the preferred crew window and pushes the work into a less convenient season. Apply for the permit early, then sequence the contract and the crew around it. If you are weighing related shoreline work on the same lot, our Lake Conroe seawall cost page covers the heavier-wall option, and the same SJRA process applies.
For this project — a full-scope replacement of roughly 30 linear feet of failed timber bulkhead on a freshwater Lake Conroe shoreline — the quote came in at $17,275 all-in. That single number covers three stages: demolition and debris haul-off ($1,700), the new bulkhead installation ($12,650), and importing and compacting 20 cubic yards of select sand backfill ($2,925). It includes labor, materials, equipment, mobilization, and moving everything roughly 400 feet across the property to the water. Permitting is coordinated separately through the SJRA.
Short bulkhead runs are priced as a fixed project package, not by the linear foot, because the costs that dominate a small job do not scale down with length. Mobilizing a crew and equipment, hauling materials 400 feet to the water, setting up, and coordinating the permit cost about the same whether the wall is 30 feet or 80 feet. On a long run those fixed costs spread thin — our 170-foot Lake Conroe vinyl-versus-wood project worked out to $195 per linear foot — but on a 30-foot wall they make a per-foot figure misleading. A flat project price is the honest way to quote work this size.
Whenever the existing wall is still holding the upland soil, we prefer to drive a new wall a foot or two in front of it and skip demolition entirely — that is what we did on our Lake Livingston and 170-foot Lake Conroe projects. This site was different: the old timber structure and its decking were failing and sat directly on the new wall alignment, so a partial demolition and haul-off into a roll-off dumpster was the cleaner path. Demolition is broken out as its own line ($1,700) so you can see exactly what that scope costs.
On a sheltered freshwater lake like Lake Conroe, the embedded structure of a CCA pressure-treated timber bulkhead — the piles and the buried deadman anchors — commonly lasts 30 to 45 years, because freshwater has none of the salt corrosion that shortens hardware life on the coast. The part that ages first is the above-waterline face: the 2x8 boards that take sun and wet-dry cycling typically want attention around the 15-to-20-year mark, and that face refresh is the usual mid-life repair rather than a full rebuild. Annual inspection and small fixes push the whole assembly toward the top of that range.
Yes. Lake Conroe is a San Jacinto River Authority reservoir, and shoreline structures on it require an SJRA permit, plus any applicable Montgomery County or HOA shoreline-setback rules. Plan for roughly 4 to 8 weeks from application to approval, and apply before you lock a construction date — the permit timeline, not the build, is usually what sets the schedule. Applying early is the single best thing an owner can do to keep the project on track.
Yes — this project does both. The new wall ties directly into the existing dock on one end, meets the neighbor's bulkhead on one side, and turns a 5-foot return onto the shore on the other side so water cannot scour around the open corner. Tie-ins like these are routine, but they are layout work: the crew confirms the property line and the dock connection before stake-out, and the return length is set so the new wall closes off the bank cleanly rather than leaving an exposed end.
Shore Protect Construction designs and builds timber, vinyl, and steel bulkheads across Texas inland lakes and the Gulf Coast. SJRA permit coordination, demolition and full replacement when that is the right call, in-front retrofit when it saves you money, and turnkey installation by a crew with over 20 years of marine construction experience. Request a free site estimate and we'll put a real number on your shoreline.
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