L-06.FN · Fencing
Ornamental aluminum where the view matters and wood privacy where it does not. Set to grade so the top line follows the land instead of stepping against it.
Very few lots in Floyd County are flat, and slope is what separates a fence that looks right from one that does not. There are two ways to handle it. Stepping holds each panel level and drops it at every post, which leaves a staircase along the top and triangular gaps underneath. Racking builds the panel to follow the grade, so the top line runs parallel to the ground and there is no gap at the bottom.
Racked is almost always the better answer on residential ground here, and it is the harder one to build, which is why stepped fences are so common on sloping lots in this market.
The second local factor is what the fence is for. Ornamental aluminum where a view matters and you want the boundary without losing the outlook. Wood privacy where the neighbour is close and the point is not seeing them. Pool barrier where there is no choice, because it is code.
The line is established first and agreed before anything is dug. On a boundary fence that means knowing where the property line actually is rather than where the old fence was, which are regularly not the same, and it is worth resolving before posts go in the ground.
Utilities are located. Posts are set in concrete to a depth that accounts for the fence height and the wind load it will carry, because a tall privacy fence is a sail.
Panels are racked to grade on slopes so the top line follows the land. Where the ground is genuinely too steep to rack, stepping is used deliberately and told to you in advance rather than discovered at handover.
Gates are hung on posts sized for them, which is heavier than the run posts. A gate post carrying a wide gate on standard posts is the single most common reason a gate drags within a year.
Pool barrier fencing is built to the code requirements, including self-closing and self-latching hardware with the latch at the required height, and the gaps and heights that make it a barrier rather than a fence.
Quoted by the linear foot, with gates priced individually because they are disproportionately more work than the run.
Height and material drive the base rate. Beyond that: slope, because racking a panel is more labour than stepping it; the number of corners and direction changes, each of which is a post and a cut; and gates, especially wide or double gates, which need heavier posts and better hardware.
Then what the post holes go through. Rock near the surface is common on ridge ground and it changes a post-setting budget quickly. Existing fence removal and disposal is its own line, and so is clearing a fence line that has grown over.
Gates that drag or will not latch within the first year, which is a gate post that was never sized for the gate.
Posts that lean after a couple of wet seasons, from holes that were too shallow or too narrow for the height they carry.
A stepped top line on a slope with gaps under every panel, which defeats a privacy fence and lets dogs out of a containment fence.
On wood: boards cupping and splitting early, from material that went up green and dried in place.
Quoted by the linear ft, line by line, after a site walk. Across 21 counties from the shop in Floyd County.