How to Restore Wood Pilings

Enlist at least two partners to help with the job. You'll need to work quickly against the tides and won't have time to cover all the necessary ground yourself. Don't be afraid to separate the job into sessions across multiple days.

Time your wood piling restoration. Consult a tide prediction service, readily available for free online, to find out when the low tide will occur. Working in the low tide will allow you to access the greatest surface area of the pilings.

Equip your pressure washer with a zero-degree blasting nozzle.

Cart the pressure washer, with a full tank of gas and a full water tank, and transport two telescopic rigid ladders out to the surface dock, pier or bridge. Keep one person on post on the surface to move the pressure washer and refill it if necessary.

Feed one of the ladders down so it rests against a piling, securing its feet in the mud. The “on post” person should stabilize the ladder as the person who will man the pressure washer climbs down it to reach the surface of the post.

Feed the pressure washer nozzle to the person on the ladder, if “on post.” If on the ladder, grip the pressure sprayer with two hands and slowly spray down the pilings in strips, removing any barnacles, mollusks, algae or other buildup.

Move on to the next piling as a team. When one piling has been pressure washed, the "on post" person should help lower and stabilize a ladder on the next piling. Keep a ladder on the clean piling for the third person, who will scrape off any excess buildup on the piling by hand with a paint scraper. Repeat this process for each piling.

Pressure wash and scrape any pilings above the surface of the dock, pier or bridge after those below the surface have been restored. This transition serves as a good time for a break, as you will no longer have to worry about tides.

Apply liberal amounts of tung oil to above-surface pilings with a work rag. Buff the oil into the pilings with a circular motion. This acts as a protective surface coating.