When Do You Need a Fencing Contractor?

Most people don't think about their fence until something forces them to. Fair enough. But a few of these are worth getting ahead of, because the cost of waiting is real.

The posts have gone at ground level

This is the big one. Push your timber fence at the middle of a bay. If it moves more than you'd expect, the posts are rotting where they enter the soil. Palings can be replaced for very little; posts mean rebuilding the run. A fence that wobbles now is a fence on the ground after the next decent blow, and a fence on the ground is a dog out on the road.

Cost of acting early versus late isn't much different on the fence itself. It's different on everything else that goes wrong while it's down.

You're selling, and the pool fence won't pass

Pool barrier compliance comes up at sale and it comes up at the worst possible time. Queensland requires a compliant barrier under AS1926.1, and the things that fail are rarely the fence panels. It's a gate that no longer self-closes, a latch at the wrong height, or something inside the non-climbable zone giving a child a step up: a pot, a tap, a retaining wall edge, a garden bed built up against the barrier.

Get it looked at before the contract, not during the inspection period when you're negotiating under time pressure. Our aluminium and glass pages cover what compliant actually means.

Storm season took it out

Every summer the bayside gets a southerly that puts fences down, and the exposed boundaries at Manly, Wellington Point and Lota cop the worst of it. When it happens, the order of operations is: make it safe, make the yard secure if you've got pets or kids, then sort the replacement properly.

Worth knowing that the fences which go over in a storm are usually the ones with stretched post spacing or shallow footings. If yours came down and the one next door didn't, that's probably why, and rebuilding it the same way is a decision rather than an accident.

A new build is nearly finished

Builders frequently don't include boundary fencing, or include the cheapest possible version. If you're approaching handover on an estate through Thornlands, Birkdale or Victoria Point, now is the moment. The ground is still open, the machine can get around the block, and nothing is landscaped yet. Fencing a finished yard with established gardens and a pool already in costs more and is messier.

The neighbour has raised it

Under Queensland's Neighbourhood Disputes Resolution Act a dividing fence is generally a shared cost. If a neighbour has approached you, or you want to approach them, a written quote makes the conversation concrete instead of theoretical. We'll provide one you can hand over. We stay out of the negotiation itself, but having a real number on paper settles most of these quickly.

You've lost your privacy to a new build next door

A two-storey going up beside a single-storey changes the sightlines into your yard permanently, and a standard 1.8m fence won't fix it. Options include a lattice or slat extension on top of an existing Colorbond run, a taller fence where the planning rules allow, or screening at the deck rather than the boundary. Usually it's cheaper to add to what's there than to start again.

A retaining wall is leaning

Don't leave this one. A wall that's started to bulge or lean has already partly failed, and the failure mode is sudden rather than gradual. On the reactive clay through the Redlands it's almost always a drainage problem, and the longer it sits saturated the worse the load gets. Our retaining walls page explains why drainage decides a wall's life.

You're putting in a pool, shed or granny flat

Any of these on a sloping block means earthworks, and earthworks usually mean retaining. Doing the wall and the fencing as one job with one contractor who has an excavator on site is substantially cheaper than sequencing three trades. Worth a conversation early, while the design is still flexible.

The dog has worked out the gap

Gaps open up under raked fences on sloping ground, and dogs find them. A plinth along the base or a bottom rail usually solves it without touching the rest of the fence. Cheap fix, and far cheaper than the alternative.

What to do about it

If any of that sounds like your place, get in touch and we'll come out and look at it. We'll tell you if it's a repair rather than a replacement, because plenty of the time it is. Here's who we are if you want the background first.