Privacy Fence Installation in Anderson, SC

Privacy fence installation is the one job on this site where the words name a goal instead of a material, and that is the whole difficulty. Wood, vinyl and steel panel will all screen your yard, and they behave nothing alike three years later.

We build privacy fences across Anderson County and Greenville County, plus Easley and Clemson. Six foot is the standard here, eight foot is possible where the local rule allows it, and the line gets settled before anything is dug.

What our privacy fence installation includes

Screening the yard is half the job. The other half is putting the fence on a line you are allowed to build on and will not regret in two years.

• On-site measure and a walk of the property line, including where a survey pin is and is not
• A check on height and setback rules for your city, your county and your neighborhood association before anything is ordered
• Sight triangle check on corner lots and at the driveway apron
• Utility locate request placed ahead of digging
• Posts sized and set for a solid panel taking full wind load, not sized off the height alone
• Concrete run the full depth of the hole and crowned at the top so water sheds off it
• Material picked for how private it will still be in year five rather than on the day we finish
• Gates wide enough for a mower, a trailer or whatever actually has to get through them
• Old fence tear out and haul away where there is one standing
• Cleanup, and a walk of the finished line with you before we leave

If the yard has an HVAC pad, a meter, a septic lid or an easement running through it, we find that at the quote and lay the fence out around it instead of discovering it with an auger.

Signs you need privacy fence installation

People call us about privacy for a short list of reasons, and the reason changes what we build for them.

• A new house went up behind you and a second story window now looks straight into the yard
• You put in a pool or a hot tub and would like to be able to use it
• The back of the lot faces a road and you want the noise knocked down along with the view
• A dog that needs containing and also needs to stop barking at everything it can see
• The neighbor's boat, storage or dog run is the view from your kitchen window
• You are on a corner lot and the side yard is effectively public ground

Each of those points at a different build. Noise wants mass and no gaps. A pool wants a material that shrugs off humidity. A barking dog wants no sight line at all, which rules out shadowbox before we start.

Wood, vinyl or steel panel

Three materials will screen a yard in this market. Choosing between them is really a question about how long you are staying and how much maintenance you will honestly do.

There is no wrong answer in that table, only a wrong match. Wood is the right buy when the budget is the constraint or you want a stained color. Vinyl is right when you are staying fifteen years and would rather not think about it. Steel panel suits newer houses and is the stiffest of the three in a storm.

How we install a privacy fence

The first two steps are the ones that separate a good privacy fence job from an expensive argument.

1. Walk the line with you and establish where the property line actually runs, not where the old fence or the mowing line suggests it does
2. Check height limits, setbacks, any neighborhood rule and, on corner lots, the sight triangle
3. Place the utility locate request and mark irrigation, lighting and septic where it applies
4. String the line and mark post centers, planning where the run steps on a grade
5. Dig holes wide and deep for a solid panel carrying full wind load
6. Set posts in concrete to a string, crown the footings and leave them to cure
7. Run rails or drop panels, keeping the top line straight rather than following the ground
8. Hang gates on upsized posts and set the hardware so they still swing true under load
9. Tear out, haul away, clean up and walk the finished line with you

Two to three days is typical for a back yard. The thing that adds time is not the building, it is a line that turns out to be in dispute, which is exactly why we settle it on day one.

Height, setbacks and sight lines in Anderson County

No statewide fence permit exists in South Carolina, and the state sets no height limit either. Every rule that applies to your privacy fence is written locally, by the City of Anderson, by one of the eight incorporated towns, by the county, or by your neighborhood association. Those four can say different things about the same fence, and the strictest one is the one you have to build to.

The rule that catches people out is not height, it is visibility. City of Anderson development standards keep a protected sight triangle at driveways and intersections clear of anything forming a material impediment to visibility between 42 inches and 10 feet above roadway grade. A six foot solid fence sits squarely inside that band. On a corner lot or beside a driveway that means the fence has to stop short, drop to picket height, or move back, and it is far cheaper to learn that at the quote than after the concrete has gone off.

The ground is the other local factor. Cecil clay holds water in a post hole and softens when it saturates, and Anderson takes about 48 inches of rain a year. A six foot solid privacy fence is a continuous sail with nowhere for wind to pass through, so the entire load lands on the posts and then on wet clay. Frost is not why anyone digs deep in the Upstate. Wind load in soft ground is.

42 inches to 10 feet above the roadCity of Anderson standards keep that band clear inside a protected sight triangle, which is exactly where a six foot privacy fence wants to sit on a corner lot.

What drives the price of a privacy fence

Privacy fences carry more material per foot than anything except commercial work, so small changes in the specification move the number quickly.

• Linear feet, and whether the yard is a clean rectangle or has jogs and angles in it
• Material, with pressure treated pine lowest and vinyl and steel panel above it
• Height, since going from six to eight foot adds a rail, more material and deeper posts
• Board pattern in wood, where board on board costs more and stays private longer
• Post size, depth and concrete volume, all of which a solid panel needs more of than an open fence
• Gates, gate width and hardware, because a privacy gate is heavy and drags when it is under built
• Slope, which means stepped sections, custom cuts or a run of mixed panel heights
• Corners, ends and tying into the house or into an existing fence
• Tear out and disposal of whatever is standing there now, including the old footings
• Access, rock and roots, which decide how fast the digging actually goes

The figure people quote each other at the ball field is almost always the cheapest combination there is: pine, six foot, butted boards, flat yard, one walk gate. That is a real fence and we build plenty of them. It is simply not the same fence as board on board cedar on a sloped corner lot with a double drive gate.

Why a new privacy fence stops being private

The most common disappointment in this trade is a wood privacy fence that was solid the day it was finished and has daylight through it eighteen months later. Nothing failed. The wood dried.

Pressure treated pine arrives wet. The preservative is forced into the lumber under pressure, so the board you install is carrying water it will lose across its first year in the yard. As it loses that water it shrinks across its width. Butt a row of wet boards edge to edge and every one of them pulls back from its neighbor, and the sum of all those small retreats is a fence you can see through.

• Butted privacy: gaps are certain, and the only question is how wide they get
• Board on board: boards overlap, so shrinkage eats into the overlap instead of opening daylight
• Shadowbox: alternating boards either side of the rail, private from straight on and open at an angle, which is fine for screening and wrong for a barking dog
• Vinyl and steel panel: the material does not shrink, so the screen you buy is the screen you keep
• Cedar: drier at install than treated pine, so it moves less, though it still moves

If the fence has to stay solid, the honest options are board on board in wood or a panel material that does not shrink at all. We still quote butted privacy when that is what you want, but we say this part out loud first rather than letting you find it out in year two.