Fence installation and repair in Rome, GA

Why people call about a fence

• A gate that has to be lifted or dragged, or has stopped latching altogether
• Posts that move when you push on the fence, or a run that has gone out of plumb
• Posts dark and soft right at the dirt line while the wood above them is fine
• Boards cupping, splitting, or coming away from the rails
• A top line gone wavy, so the run no longer reads straight from the street
• A section flattened by a limb, a storm or a vehicle
• Chain link gone slack between posts, or a top rail pulled out of its fitting
• Vinyl panels cracked at an impact, or popped out of the rails
• A new dog, a pool, or livestock to keep in, and a yard that will not hold any of them
• A boundary with nothing on it, where privacy is the whole point

How a fence job goes

1. The posts are the job, and the ground decides the posts

   A fence is a row of posts with material hung between them, so almost every failure is reporting on something happening at ground level. Red clay is the local complication. Its particles are fine and flat, so it holds water instead of passing it through, and a hole dug in clay and filled back in behaves like a bucket: the post can be standing in water days after the yard has dried out. The same clay swells when it takes water and shrinks through a dry August, and that seasonal movement is what walks a post out of plumb over a few years. Depth is not one number either. It answers to the height of the fence above ground, because a tall fence is a long lever, to whether that post is carrying a gate or turning a corner, and to what the hole actually hits. On the ridges around here rock can stop you short of two feet, and the plan changes at that hole rather than at the next one.

2. The line and the slope get settled before anything is dug

   Corners, gate positions and where the run sits relative to the boundary all get agreed on the ground first, because a fence is the one thing on a property that is difficult to move six inches after the fact. Slope is the decision most people do not see coming. A fence either steps down a hill in level sections, which reads crisp from the street and leaves a triangle of daylight under each step, or it racks and follows the grade, so the top line runs parallel to the ground and the pickets sit slightly off vertical. On a gentle fall either one works and it is a matter of taste. On a steep one the ground makes the choice, and it is worth making it deliberately, because it is the difference between a bottom edge a dog cannot get under and a row of gaps.

3. Gates are built as their own problem

   The gate is the only moving part in the whole fence, and it is where most of the complaints start. It hangs entirely off one post, and every swing levers that post toward the opening, which is why a gate post is a bigger piece of work than the posts either side of it. A sagging gate is usually that post moving, or a frame that has racked out of square. The brace is the part that gets fitted backwards: a wooden diagonal works by pushing, so it runs from the bottom corner on the hinge side up to the top corner on the latch side, while a cable and turnbuckle works by pulling and runs the other way, from the top hinge corner down toward the latch. Put in the wrong direction it does nothing at all, and plenty of sagging gates have a brace on them already. Width counts too, because a gate wide enough to walk a mower through and one wide enough to back a truck through are not the same build.

4. Material changes what fails, not whether it fails

   Wood grays, cups and rots, and it rots first wherever it stays wet: the bottom of the boards, the end grain, and the post at the dirt line, especially where mulch or a flower bed has been heaped against it. Vinyl does not rot and does not want paint, and it fails differently. An impact cracks a panel instead of splitting a board, and a cracked panel is a replacement rather than a repair. Chain link goes at its fittings and its tension: the fabric slackens, a top rail works out of a fitting, and the bottom rolls up where a dog has been pushing at it. What none of them escape is the ground, because vinyl and chain link stand on posts in the same clay as everything else. Exterior work calls for exterior-rated fasteners. Ordinary screws corrode in treated lumber and fail slowly, which is a quiet way to build the same problem back in.

What drives the price

Fencing prices by the foot right up to the point where the ground, the slope or the gates get involved, and at least one of those three usually does. These are the variables.

• Linear footage, and how many corners, ends and gate posts the run needs, because those carry more than the posts between them
• Height and material: wood, vinyl and chain link are different jobs at different numbers
• Style, from privacy boards set shoulder to shoulder through spaced picket to open ranch rail
• Gates: how many, how wide, and whether anything has to drive through one
• The ground itself. Rock close to the surface, saturated clay and tree roots all change what a hole costs to dig
• Slope, and whether the fence steps down the hill or follows the grade
• Access, including whether a machine can reach the line and how far material has to be carried from the road
• Whether an existing fence has to come out, and what is left behind in the old holes
• For a repair, whether the posts are sound, which is the difference between re-boarding a run and rebuilding it
• For a pool barrier, what the local code requires, since that decides the height, the gaps and the gate hardware rather than taste

The ground is the part nobody can quote from a photograph, and it varies inside a single lot around here, never mind between two streets. For a repair, the useful thing to know before spending anything is whether the posts are still good: re-boarding a run over sound posts costs a fraction of rebuilding it, and new boards fixed to posts that have gone is money spent twice.

What to expect

1. Send photos: one down the length of the run, one at the base of a post, and one of any gate.

2. We walk the line and lean on the posts. That is the two minutes that separates a board repair from a rebuild.

3. You get a scope: what stays, what gets replaced, the height, the material, the style, and where the gates go.

4. Before anything is dug, the line gets agreed on the ground and the underground utilities get located. In Georgia that call is required of anyone putting a hole in the ground.

Fence Installation & Repair questions

Where we do this work

Fence Installation & Repair across Rome, Floyd County and the towns around them across Northwest Georgia and Northeast Alabama, including 5 distinct parts of Rome, from Between the Rivers to the West Rome / Coosa side. That is Floyd County, Bartow County, Polk County, Gordon County, Chattooga County, Paulding County, Cherokee County, DeKalb County, Cobb County, Walker County, Haralson County and Cherokee County, anywhere inside about a 45-minute drive of Rome.

Town by town, that means Rome, Lindale, Adairsville, Cedartown, Summerville, Rockmart, Calhoun, Cartersville, Euharlee, Shannon, Cave Spring, Kingston, White, Emerson, Plainville, Resaca, Fairmount, Aragon, Trion, Lyerly, Menlo, Dallas, Centre, Cedar Bluff, Sand Rock, Gaylesville, Fort Payne, Mentone, Valley Head, Acworth, Kennesaw, Buchanan, LaFayette and Waleska. Smaller places in those counties are covered too. The full picture.