Will this tell me what is wrong with my seawall?

No. It tells you which of the fourteen documented failure mechanisms your observations are consistent with, in order of how urgently each one is classified. Several mechanisms produce the same visible sign and are separated by things nobody can see from the yard — the depth of bed still in front of the panels, the condition of buried anchors, how much backfill has already gone. A checkbox cannot settle any of those and this page does not pretend to.

Why does it not give me one answer?

Because the honest output of a surface observation is usually more than one mechanism. A strip of lawn that has dropped along the wall is consistent with soil escaping through the joints, with a void that has already formed behind the wall, and with slab settlement carrying its own separate cause. Picking one of the three and presenting it as the answer would be a guess with a confident font.

Do I have to enter my details?

No. There is no form in front of the result, no email required and no question asked before the answer appears. If you want a person to read a description of your situation afterwards, that is separate and optional.

I cannot see any of these things. Is my wall fine?

Unestablished, which is not the same as fine. The mechanisms that decide the repair-versus-replacement fork — anchor condition, toe embedment, backfill loss — are all invisible from the surface, and a wall can be well into any of them with nothing showing above the waterline. Seeing none of these signs means the wall is not visibly failing, which is genuinely useful and is a smaller claim than it sounds like.

How urgent is ASSESS NOW?

It is an instruction to find out, never a prediction. The failure library classifies a mechanism ASSESS NOW when waiting has a structural cost rather than only a financial one — rotation that continues, soil that keeps leaving, scour that keeps deepening. Each classification is published with its reasoning attached, on the page for that mechanism, so you can judge whether the reasoning applies to what you are looking at.

Start from what you can see, not from what it is called

Tick what you can see from your own yard. You get back the documented failure mechanisms those observations are consistent with, in order of urgency, with what each one is commonly mistaken for. No contact details, and no single answer where the evidence does not support one.

The failure library on this site documents 14 ways a Florida seawall fails, each with what an inspector has to check and the questions to put to whoever proposes work on it. It is organised by mechanism, which is the right order for the answer and the wrong order for the door: it assumes you already know whether you are looking at tieback failure, toe scour or hydrostatic pressure. On a first visit almost nobody does. You are looking at a dip in the lawn.

This page is the same library indexed the other way round — by the 19 things a person can actually observe, in the words they would use for them. Tick what is true of your wall and you get the entries those observations bear on, ordered by how urgently each is classified, with the reasoning behind the classification attached.

What comes back is a shortlist, and the word is exact. Observations narrow the field; they do not close it. Nearly every visible sign on a seawall is produced by more than one mechanism, and the thing that separates them is below the waterline or behind the wall. That is not a limitation of this page — it is the reason a seawall assessment involves somebody getting in the water.

Why a shortlist is more useful than a diagnosis

A homeowner who arrives at a seawall assessment with no vocabulary is in a poor position, and not because contractors are dishonest. Most are not. The problem is structural: the person who knows what was found is the person quoting the work, the findings are underwater, and there is no natural moment in the conversation where a homeowner discovers which checks were actually performed. A number arrives, and the only question available is whether it feels high.

A shortlist changes the available questions. If your observations point at anchors and at soil loss, you now know that an assessment which examined the wall face and nothing else has not covered your situation — and you know it before the quote rather than after the work. Every entry the tool returns ends with what an inspector has to check for that mechanism specifically, which is the part a contractor-owned resource has the least reason to publish.

The three things nothing above the waterline settles

Whatever your shortlist says, three questions decide which end of the published cost range applies to your wall, and none of them can be answered from the yard.

How much bed is still in front of the panels. Embedment is what resists rotation, it is measured along the run rather than at one point, and it is the most common thing missing from a cheap assessment. What condition the anchors are in. They are buried behind the wall, they are the single largest structural difference between a modest quote and a large one, and they are invisible in a finished wall of any age. How much backfill has already left. That is a volume, established by probing rather than by the size of the dip in the lawn, and the surface consistently understates it.

The inspection page covers what a real assessment examines above and below the waterline. The repair-or-replace page covers how the fork is actually decided, which is by mechanism rather than by how bad the wall looks. If you have a number in hand already, the published cost ranges are worth seeing at full width first — they disagree by roughly eightfold, and the width is the finding.

Everything the index looks for

Listed in full, so the tool above is not the only way to read it and so nothing it checks for is hidden behind an interaction. Each is grouped by where you would be standing when you noticed it.

the face of the wall

The top of the wall sits further out over the water than the base, or further out than it used to
One or more panels bulge outward in the middle while the ends stay in line
A crack runs across a panel horizontally, roughly parallel to the water
Rust-coloured stains run down the face, or concrete has flaked away and metal is showing
Gaps have opened between panels — wide enough to see daylight, or to lose a finger in
A section of the wall has come down, tipped over, or is lying in the water

the cap along the top

The flat concrete top has cracked, lifted, or pulled away from the wall underneath it
Sighting along the top, one stretch sits higher, lower or further out than the rest

the ground behind the wall

A strip of lawn along the wall has dropped, or dips underfoot when you walk it
A hole or sudden depression has opened near the wall
The ground sounds hollow, or a rod pushes in far more easily near the wall than away from it
A pool deck, patio, walkway or driveway near the wall has settled, tilted or cracked
Soil, sand or mulch along the wall keeps disappearing and having to be topped up

water and drainage

Water runs or seeps through the wall after heavy rain, or spurts from it as the tide drops
The small drainage holes are blocked, absent, or discharging soil rather than clear water
Water stands in the yard behind the wall and takes a long time to go anywhere

the base, in the water

The bottom in front of the wall has dropped away, or you can see under the base of the panels

what somebody else reported

A diver, inspector or contractor reported scour, undermining, or lost depth at the base
Someone reported the anchors or tiebacks as corroded, pulled, broken — or said they could not find them

Questions we can answer from sources

Will this tell me what is wrong with my seawall?: No. It tells you which of the fourteen documented failure mechanisms your observations are consistent with, in order of how urgently each one is classified. Several mechanisms produce the same visible sign and are separated by things nobody can see from the yard — the depth of bed still in front of the panels, the condition of buried anchors, how much backfill has already gone. A checkbox cannot settle any of those and this page does not pretend to.
Why does it not give me one answer?: Because the honest output of a surface observation is usually more than one mechanism. A strip of lawn that has dropped along the wall is consistent with soil escaping through the joints, with a void that has already formed behind the wall, and with slab settlement carrying its own separate cause. Picking one of the three and presenting it as the answer would be a guess with a confident font.
Do I have to enter my details?: No. There is no form in front of the result, no email required and no question asked before the answer appears. If you want a person to read a description of your situation afterwards, that is separate and optional.
I cannot see any of these things. Is my wall fine?: Unestablished, which is not the same as fine. The mechanisms that decide the repair-versus-replacement fork — anchor condition, toe embedment, backfill loss — are all invisible from the surface, and a wall can be well into any of them with nothing showing above the waterline. Seeing none of these signs means the wall is not visibly failing, which is genuinely useful and is a smaller claim than it sounds like.
How urgent is ASSESS NOW?: It is an instruction to find out, never a prediction. The failure library classifies a mechanism ASSESS NOW when waiting has a structural cost rather than only a financial one — rotation that continues, soil that keeps leaving, scour that keeps deepening. Each classification is published with its reasoning attached, on the page for that mechanism, so you can judge whether the reasoning applies to what you are looking at.

The failure library: 14 mechanisms in full
Severity with its reasoning, and what an inspector must check for each.
What a real inspection covers
Including the parts that happen below the waterline.
Repair or replace: how the fork is decided
By failure mechanism, not by how bad the wall looks.
Apply the published ranges to your wall
Every published Florida figure, with its publisher. No single number.