Fence Company in Piedmont, SC

Anderson Fence Company is a fence company in Piedmont, SC, and this is the one place in our service area where the first question on a quote is which county you are in.

Piedmont is an unincorporated community of 5,411 people sitting on both banks of the Saluda River, which is also the Anderson and Greenville county line. It grew around the Piedmont Manufacturing Company, founded in 1873 by Henry Pinckney Hammett, and the first mill village went up on the Greenville side. There is no town hall. The rules that apply to your fence come from whichever county your parcel sits in, and two neighbors looking at each other across the water answer to different offices.

One community, two counties

Fence height and setback are not state questions in South Carolina. They are settled county by county and town by town. In an incorporated town that means one phone call. In Piedmont it means knowing whether your address falls under Anderson County or Greenville County, because the answer to a setback or height question can come back differently on each side of the river.

We work both sides and we are in Anderson County every day, so this is routine for us rather than an obstacle. What we ask of customers is that they confirm the county from their tax record rather than from their mailing address, since a Piedmont address does not settle it. Once we know, the layout is drawn to fit and there is no surprise afterward.

One more consequence worth knowing: county setback rules tend to be written for larger parcels than the old village lots near the mill. On a tight lot with a shared drive or an outbuilding on the line, the practical constraint is usually your own boundary and your neighbor, not the county rule.

Fencing ground that falls to the river

Most of the older Piedmont lots slope, and they slope in one direction, which is toward the water. A solid fence on falling ground has exactly two honest options and they look completely different when finished.

• Stepped: each panel stays level and drops a fixed amount at every post, so the top line is a staircase and triangular gaps open under the bottom rail on the downhill side
• Raked: the rails follow the grade and the pickets stay plumb, so the fence bottom hugs the ground with no gaps and the top line runs at a constant angle
• Mixed: stepping across the steep section and raking the gentle one, which is often what a real yard actually needs

Stepping suits vinyl and aluminum panels, which are manufactured square and cannot be racked far. Raking suits wood built on site, which is one of the strongest arguments for building a wood fence stick by stick rather than hanging prefabricated sections. If you have a small dog, raking or blocking the gaps is not optional, because a stepped fence on a grade leaves openings a determined terrier treats as a door.

Water is the other half of slope. About 48 inches of rain lands on this part of the Upstate in an average year, it runs downhill, and the Cecil clay underneath drains slowly once it is saturated. A fence line across the fall of a yard becomes a small dam if the bottom is tight to the ground, so on a raked run we look at where the water is already going and leave it somewhere to go.

Mill houses and new construction, side by side

Piedmont holds two kinds of housing at once. Near the old mill site the lots are small, the houses are original village stock, and the fence job is short, tight and often built against an existing line. Out along the corridor toward the county line, newer subdivisions have gone in on former farmland, with bigger back yards, graded clay and in many cases an architectural committee that has opinions about material and color.

That second group usually lands on vinyl or aluminum, because neighborhood rules tend to accept them and because nobody wants to stain a fence. The first group usually lands on treated pine or chain link, because the runs are short and the priority is doing a job rather than making a statement. We build all of it and we will tell you which side of that line your street sits on.