By Roman Ross — Marine Construction Estimator, Shore Protect Construction
A Port Lavaca homeowner reached out with a clear, honest brief: a seven-year-old timber pier on Lavaca Bay, three small hurricanes survived, and one stubborn problem — the left side of the end landing had settled and tilted, some of the deck boards had started to rot, the walkway handrail had gone loose, and the wide end platform had no railing at all. The ask was simple to state and hard to do cheaply: make it solid again, add a railing around the end landing, and make it last another ten years on salt water. This is the project — what causes a pier corner to settle, why this is a repair and not a teardown, why every fastener on a bay pier has to be 316 stainless steel, the as-quoted scope and materials, the five-day execution plan, honest 2026 saltwater pricing, and what permitting in Calhoun County actually requires.
Bottom line: On Lavaca Bay in 2026, repairing this 1,104 SF treated-timber pier — re-leveling the settled end-landing corner, sistering the fatigued joists, replacing about 28% of the deck, tightening the walkway rail, and adding 60 LF of new end-landing railing — runs $18.57 per square foot, $25,900 all-in. The deciding detail is not the lumber; it is 316 stainless steel hardware throughout, because galvanized fasteners burn out in two to three years in brackish bay water and take the railings and deck boards with them. Five working days, four-person crew, land access — no barge.
The property is a private waterfront lot on Lavaca Bay in Port Lavaca, Calhoun County, Texas — open brackish-to-salt bay water, a marsh-grass shoreline, and a long timber pier running out to a fishing platform. The structure has three parts: a 120-foot walkway about 6 feet wide, a 10-by-30-foot end landing at the far end, and a 4-by-21-foot lower section at the shore transition. Together that is roughly 1,104 square feet of deck. The decking is CCA-treated lumber gone the weathered grey-brown of seven years of sun and salt spray, with surface checking and a band of boards — about a quarter of the surface — that have moved past weathering into warping and rot. The pilings carry the green tint of CCA treatment and look intact at the waterline.
The detail that drove the scope is the left corner of the end landing, which has visibly settled — the tilt reads in the photos as a measurable drop, not a cosmetic sag. The end platform also has no perimeter railing, which is the addition the owner specifically asked for so the family can fish and stand at the end safely. The walkway handrails are present on both sides but weathered and loose at the hardware. The good news for the bid was access: the owner's lawn runs right to the pier head with a concrete walkway and no slope, no fencing, and no overhead utilities, so the crew walks on from shore with no barge required. For the shoreline-protection side of the same property, our Lavaca Bay seawall cost page covers how bay-fetch and storm exposure shape that work; this post stays on the pier.
The first real decision on any settled pier is repair versus replacement, and here the honest answer is repair. A seven-year-old treated-timber pier with sound pilings and one tilted corner is well inside the service life of the material — the failure is localized, not systemic. Tearing out a structurally intact pier to rebuild a corner would be spending the owner's money to solve a problem that targeted work solves for a fraction of the cost. So the scope is built around restoring what is there: jack the settled corner of the end landing back to level, reinforce the framing so it stays level, replace only the deck boards that have actually failed, and re-secure and extend the railing.
The structural heart of the repair is re-leveling plus sister joists. When a corner of a timber landing drops, the load path through the framing under that corner has weakened — joists that have checked, split, or pulled at their connections no longer carry their share. The fix is to jack the corner back to level and then bolt a new full-length joist alongside each fatigued one — a sister joist — so the new timber carries the load the tired member can no longer hold. On this job that is 96 LF of 6x8 CCA sister-joist stock, sized to match the existing framing. It is a standard, durable repair that restores the structure without disturbing the pilings.
There is one honest caveat we put in front of every bay-pier owner, and it belongs here. The repair assumes the pilings still bear load. Lavaca Bay is known shipworm (Teredo navalis) habitat, and shipworm bores wood from the inside — a piling can look sound at the waterline while its core is honeycombed. We only confirm the true cause of the settlement once the corner is jacked back to level. If a piling turns out to be bored or rotted at the mud line, the job changes from a framing repair to piling replacement, and we stop and re-scope rather than absorb it silently. For the same repair-versus-replace logic on a freshwater lake dock, our Lake Conroe dock cleat & bumper upgrade case study shows how targeted hardware-and-framing work beats a full rebuild, and our evergreen pier repair services overview walks through which problems stay localized and which become whole-structure projects.
On a freshwater lake, you can debate hardware grade. On Lavaca Bay, you cannot. Brackish-to-salt water and salt spray corrode standard hot-dip galvanized hardware fast — owners routinely see galvanized bolts and deck screws rust through in two to three years. That corrosion is what quietly causes most of the symptoms this owner described: loose railings where the hardware has wasted away, and deck boards that work free because their screws have lost their grip. Putting the same galvanized fasteners back would reset that clock and guarantee another loose-railing call in a couple of seasons.
So the spec is 316 stainless steel throughout — every deck screw, lag bolt, and railing fastener. 316 is the marine grade that holds in salt service, and it is also the correct chemical match for CCA-treated lumber, which is aggressive toward lesser metals. This is the single decision that turns the job from a patch into a ten-year repair: the owner asked for another decade of service, and on salt water that number is only honest if the hardware is stainless. We do not warrant a bay pier built with galvanized fasteners.
Below is the as-quoted material set, straight off the client estimate. Demolition of the rotted boards is rolled into the crew's hours — there is no separate demo line on a repair this size. There is no backfill scope on a pier over open water. The 316 stainless hardware grade is consistent across every fastener on the structure.
One note on quantities: the 620 LF of deck board covers the roughly 28% of the surface that has failed, spread across the walkway, end landing, and lower section — not a full re-deck. The 60 LF of new railing wraps the three open sides of the 10x30 end landing, leaving the entrance gap. For the broader maintenance picture on a treated-timber structure, our wood pier deep-dive covers how CCA lumber ages and when partial decking is the right call versus a full replacement.
The crew is one foreman, two marine carpenters, and one laborer — four on site — and the work runs about five working days. Because the lawn meets the pier with a concrete walkway and open ground, materials come on by hand from shore and no barge is mobilized. The build breaks into three phases.
Phase 1 — Preparation & Demolition. The crew mobilizes from our Houston base to Port Lavaca, a roughly 115-mile regional run that puts the crew on site for the week rather than commuting. Materials and the generator-compressor pair are unloaded and carried out along the walkway; the work line is marked, the failed deck boards across all three sections are pulled and stacked for special-waste haul-off, and the underside framing at the settled corner is exposed for inspection. This is the point where the piling condition is confirmed before any structural commitment is made.
Phase 2 — Structural Re-Leveling & Decking. The settled left corner of the end landing is jacked back to level, and a 6x8 CCA sister joist is bolted alongside each fatigued framing member so the new timber carries the load. With the frame solid and level, fresh 5/4x6 CCA deck boards go down across the replacement zones, fastened with 316 stainless deck screws. Every structural connection made in this phase uses 316 stainless hardware — this is the phase that decides whether the repair lasts ten years or three.
Phase 3 — Railing, Protection & Finish. The new 60 LF perimeter railing is built on the 10x30 end landing — 6x6 posts set and bolted, 2x6 top/mid/bottom rails run, and 2x6 pickets installed — wrapping the three open sides. The existing walkway handrail is tightened and re-secured with new 316 stainless hardware where the old galvanized has wasted. The crew hauls the CCA debris for proper disposal, completes a final walk and load check on the new railing, and cleans the site before turning the pier back over to the owner.
For this Port Lavaca pier, the quote came in at $18.57 per square foot over the 1,104 SF of deck, with an all-in project total of $25,900. The per-square-foot figure is the on-pier build: the four-person crew for the week, the CCA lumber for the re-level and the 28% deck replacement, the sister joists, the new 60 LF end-landing railing, and the 316 stainless hardware throughout. The gap between that per-foot build and the all-in total is three honest, separate line items — mobilization to a regional bay site about 115 miles from Houston, the Calhoun County coastal repair permit, and CCA treated-wood special-waste disposal.
Saltwater work lands higher per foot than the same repair on a freshwater lake, and the reason is specific, not a coastal surcharge: 316 stainless hardware costs several times what galvanized does, and treated-wood disposal on the coast is special-waste handling. Both are line items you can see and account for. Our Lavaca Bay pier cost guide covers local per-foot and per-square-foot ranges by structure and service type, and the Lavaca Bay pier service overview walks through what we typically deliver from new construction to targeted repairs like this one.
The owner asked for another ten years, and on a sound-piling pier that target is realistic — but only with the spec held. The combination that gets there is CCA-treated lumber for the new structural members and decking, paired with 316 stainless steel hardware at every connection. The re-leveled corner with its sister joists is engineered to carry load for the long horizon; the new railing and replacement decking weather on the same curve as the rest of the structure. The variable that decides the outcome is corrosion, and that is exactly what the stainless spec removes from the equation.
Coastal-structure repair work in Calhoun County requires a county permit, and that permit is built into this quote. The reason the project does not need more than that comes down to one word: repair. The scope re-levels a corner, replaces failed boards, tightens and adds railing, and drives no new pilings or expansion out into the bay. Because the footprint does not change and the navigable water is not altered, the work generally stays clear of a fresh U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Galveston District Section 10/404 review and a new Texas General Land Office coastal lease action — both of which are triggered by changes to the footprint or the waterway, not by maintenance on an existing structure.
The mistake we see on bay piers is owners assuming a repair and an expansion live under the same rules. They do not. The moment a project adds length, widens the deck, or drives new pilings, it leaves the repair lane and has to be re-permitted — and on the coast that review takes weeks, not days. If this job had uncovered a failed piling and grown into piling replacement, we would have paused to confirm whether the larger scope crossed those lines before continuing. We confirm scope with the county on any coastal project that has a chance of crossing into new-structure territory.
On a timber pier, a corner of the end landing usually drops for one of two reasons: the framing under that corner has fatigued and is no longer carrying its share of the load, or a piling has lost bearing — either scoured at the mud line or weakened internally. On this Lavaca Bay pier, the visible tilt is on the left side of the 10x30 end landing, and the photos and three-hurricane history point to framing fatigue rather than a collapsed piling. The repair we quoted re-levels that corner and reinforces the framing with sister joists. The honest caveat is that the true cause is only confirmed once the corner is jacked back to level — if a piling turns out to be bored by shipworm or rotted at the mud line, replacing it becomes a separate, larger scope than a framing repair.
Lavaca Bay is brackish-to-salt, and standard hot-dip galvanized hardware corrodes fast in that water — owners commonly see galvanized bolts and screws rust through in two to three years, which is what loosens railings and lets deck boards work free. 316 stainless steel is the marine grade that holds up in salt spray and tidal wetting, and it is also the right chemical match for CCA-treated lumber, which is corrosive to lesser metals. Specifying 316 stainless throughout — deck screws, lag bolts, railing hardware — is the single change that makes a ten-year service window realistic on a bay pier instead of a two-to-three-year patch.
Teredo navalis, the shipworm, is a marine mollusk that bores into submerged wood from the inside, often leaving the outer surface looking sound while the core is honeycombed. Lavaca Bay is known shipworm habitat, so any timber pier there carries the risk that pilings which look fine at the waterline are compromised below it. It matters for a repair like this because our quote is built around re-leveling and framing reinforcement, which assumes the pilings still bear load. If jacking the settled corner reveals shipworm boring in a piling, the scope changes from a framing repair to piling replacement — a bigger job we would re-scope and re-price before proceeding, not absorb silently.
For this Port Lavaca pier — a 120-foot walkway, a 10x30 end landing, and a 4x21 lower section totaling about 1,104 square feet of deck — the quote came in at $18.57 per square foot, with an all-in project total of $25,900. The per-square-foot figure covers the on-pier build: the crew, the CCA lumber for the re-level and 28 percent deck replacement, the sister joists, the new 60-foot end-landing railing, and the 316 stainless hardware. Mobilization to a regional bay site about 115 miles from our Houston base, the Calhoun County coastal repair permit, and CCA-treated-wood special-waste disposal are separate line items that bring the package to $25,900. Saltwater work runs higher per foot than the same job on a freshwater lake because the hardware grade and disposal handling cost more.
About one working week — five days — with a four-person crew of a foreman, two marine carpenters, and a laborer. No barge is needed on this site: the lawn runs right to the pier head with a concrete walkway and open ground, so the crew walks materials on from shore. The only over-water access is for the underside framing at the settled corner, which is reachable from the deck edge or a brief wade in the shallow bay margin. The five-day window assumes a stable weather window, which matters on the Texas coast — Port Lavaca sits in a high-wind zone, so dispatch is confirmed against the forecast.
At seven years old with intact pilings and one settled corner, this pier is a strong repair candidate, not a teardown. The structure is well within the service life of treated timber, and the damage is localized: a tilted end-landing corner, roughly 28 percent of the deck boards weathered or rotted, and loose railing. Re-leveling, sister joists, partial decking, and new 316 stainless hardware address all of that and target another ten years of service — which is exactly what the owner asked for. Full replacement only makes sense if the pilings themselves are failing across the structure; for one settled corner on a sound frame, a targeted repair is the honest, lower-cost call.
Shore Protect Construction designs and builds piers, docks, bulkheads, and seawalls across the Texas Gulf Coast and inland lakes. Storm-settled landing re-leveling, sister-joist framing repair, 316 stainless rebuilds, and Calhoun County coastal permit coordination 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 pier.
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