Fence Company in Golden Grove, SC

Anderson Fence Company is a fence company in Golden Grove, SC, and it is one of the easiest places in Greenville County for us to reach. The western edge of Golden Grove follows the Saluda River, which is the Anderson County line, so our base is one bridge away. Highway 20 runs through the middle of it, nine miles north to Greenville and sixteen miles south through Piedmont to Belton.

Golden Grove is a census designated place rather than a town, covering about 5.8 square miles of land with 3,002 people counted in 2020, up from 2,467 in 2010. That works out to roughly 520 people per square mile, which is the numerical version of what you see driving through: pasture and woodlot with houses spread along the road, and newer subdivisions filling in the gaps.

Two kinds of property, one community

Golden Grove gives us two fence jobs that barely resemble each other. On the older parcels the fence is a working boundary: field fence and braced corners around pasture, rail along a road frontage, a gate wide enough for a tractor. On the newer builds it is a back yard perimeter on a lot that was graded three years ago, where the point is a dog, a child and a property line.

The working fences fail at the corners, not in the middle. A brace assembly is what holds the tension of a long wire run, and a corner post set in a hole with no bracing behind it leans within two seasons, which slackens every foot of wire back to the next corner. We build the corners first and stretch to them, which is the opposite of how a rushed job gets done.

The new build fences fail at the low corner of the yard. Grading strips the topsoil off these lots and compacts what is underneath, so the auger comes up in dense Cecil clay that holds water rather than shedding it. Cecil keeps its shape well, which is why posts stay plumb in it, but a narrow hole in it is a container. Wider holes and a crowned concrete collar handle that for very little extra cost.

The river side of the line

Property that runs down toward the Saluda has its own set of rules. The ground falls away, so the fence either steps or rakes, and the bottom of a run sits in soil that stays damp long after the top has dried out. Those low posts are always the first to go, so they get set with drainage in mind rather than treated like the rest of the line.

River ground also carries more wildlife than the road frontage does. Deer move along the wooded river corridor, which means a vegetable garden or a young orchard on the west side of Golden Grove needs seven to eight feet of fence to be worth planting. Four feet just marks the target.

And the river is a county line, which is worth remembering when you are checking rules. Your neighbor across the water is under Anderson County and you are under Greenville County. South Carolina has no statewide fence permit and no state height limit, so the answers come from whichever county your parcel actually sits in, and they are not automatically the same.

Long drives and the gate at the road

Most houses out here sit well back from Highway 20 or from the county roads feeding it, and the gate at the end of the drive gets more use and more abuse than any other part of the fence. Width is the enemy of a gate. Every extra foot of leaf multiplies the leverage trying to pull the hinge post out of the ground, and a gravel drive that slopes toward the road means gravity is helping it.

So the hinge post is sized and set for the leaf before the style gets picked, and if an automatic opener is anywhere in your plans the gate is framed for the motor from day one. Retrofitting an operator onto a gate that was never built to carry one is the most common reason a driveway gate starts binding and sagging in its second year.