Aluminum Fence Installation in Easley, SC

Most aluminum fence installation in Easley is a replacement job on a brick ranch. The 1950s to 1970s ranch belt here went up with galvanized chain link, and fifty years later the fabric sags and the line posts have corroded through at grade, which is where the zinc gives out first.

Easley has 22,921 residents and about 11,898 housing units, and three housing eras sit inside one town: the 1900 mill complex with the Glenwood and Woodside villages, that ranch belt, and the covenanted subdivisions built since 2005 off Highway 123. Aluminum suits two of the three comfortably, and we will say when it is the wrong answer for the third.

Replacing fifty year old chain link with aluminum

Galvanized chain link fails from the bottom up. Zinc protects the steel underneath until it is scraped or worn away, and the place that happens first is the few inches at grade where a string trimmer works and where water sits against the post. By the time the top rail starts to sag, the posts are usually a lot thinner than they look.

Aluminum answers that exact failure because there is no iron in it to lose. A chip in the powder coat stays a chip rather than starting something that creeps along under the finish. The coating itself is a dry powder applied electrostatically and then baked, so it is fused to the metal rather than laid over it as a film, which is why it does not lift in sheets the way old paint on a steel fence eventually does.

The other gain is that the yard stops looking like a utility easement. A ranch house with a black ornamental run behind it reads completely differently from the same house behind galvanized mesh, and the boundary is still see through, which is what most owners liked about the chain link to begin with. Chain link is still the better buy when the fence is purely functional and the budget is the priority, and we install plenty of it.

Back yards that face the Doodle Trail

Lots backing the Doodle Trail do not face a neighbor. They face a public rail trail with people moving along it, and that changes two decisions at once. The good side question disappears, because an aluminum panel has no back to it. The privacy question gets asked honestly instead of assumed.

Aluminum is a boundary, not a screen. If the goal is to stop people on the path looking into the yard, aluminum on its own will not do it and you should hear that before you buy. What it does well is mark the line, hold a dog and keep a bike off the grass without walling off an outlook that a lot of owners along there specifically wanted. Planting behind an ornamental run gets you the screen over a few seasons without the wall.

If a dog is the reason for the fence, spacing near the ground matters more on a trail lot than on an interior one, because there is constant movement on the other side to chase. Puppy picket panels tighten the bottom section, and a mesh attachment or a concrete mow strip closes off the ground line under the bottom rail.

Pool barriers and the newer subdivisions

The post-2005 subdivisions off Highway 123 and the Smithfields Country Club golf homes are where aluminum goes in new rather than as a swap. Covenants in those neighborhoods commonly permit ornamental metal in the same clause that bans chain link outright, and on golf frontage an open fence is often the only thing allowed at all.

Pools drive the rest of it. South Carolina builds to the International Residential Code, which requires a residential pool barrier of at least 48 inches with self closing and self latching gates. Aluminum is how most people here get there, because it reaches the height, takes that hardware and does not turn the water into a cage.

48 inchesIs the shortest a residential pool barrier can be under the code South Carolina builds to, and the gate serving it has to close and latch on its own.

What a aluminum fencing job in Easley includes

An Easley aluminum quote is written from whatever is already standing in the yard.

• A measure that records the fall across each panel length rather than an average for the run
• Tear out of old chain link, including the fabric, the terminal posts and the original footings
• Utility locate request placed before we dig
• Powder coated posts, panels, caps, brackets and gate frames in black, bronze or white
• Panels racked to follow the grade so nothing is left open under the bottom rail
• Puppy picket panels, base mesh or a mow strip where a dog is the reason for the fence
• Self closing hinges and self latching hardware on any gate serving a pool
• Gate posts upsized and set deeper, with the grade of the system named on the paperwork

The full breakdown of materials, process and pricing factors lives on our aluminum fence installation page. This page covers what changes in Easley.