Garden Fence Installation Unprofessional or Normal?

dhuk0208

Hello All, 

I just moved into a new house, this is the fence slightly blown down, it is just one fence connecting the garage to the another fence, the post is not sunk into the ground and nails are used to secure one side to the one post and the other to the other fence. Please can someone confirm if this is normal? Thank you.

princeofpounds

The post that is attached to the brick wall is firmly bolted, it seems. That is quite normal. Simply nailing the fence panel to that post... well, I suspect it works much of the time but it clearly hasn't on this occasion. It can be quite standard to attach fence panels to posts with nails, but if they are all the same direction and subject to movement then they can loosen and fail. Looks like it would be very easily rectified by removing the nails and putting in some screws instead.

It's hard to tell from the picture what was originally happening at the other end. Normally you would attach the panel to a proper fence post, sunk into the ground and secured with some kind of concrete-like product, like post-mix.

Sometimes it doesn't quite fit and you'll get some kind of timber put in as a spacer between panel and secure post. Again, nails can fail if there is too much movement and they are all in the same direction, screws or a different pattern of nailing would be better.

So to me, it looks like it has been partially-bodged, but is probably quite easy to fix to be much more secure.

Slinky

The other fence doesn't look a lot better. The fence is barely touching the gravel boards, so something's warped - fence or boards. Not enough posts?

Jeepers_Creepers

dhuk0208 said:

All the right materials seem to have been used, and in the correct way - it's a decent fence, and a lot better than using most off-the-shelf panels. As said above, all that seems to have happened is that it has detached itself from the end post. (Tho' the way the bottom ends of the slats are no in line with the gravel board is a bit suspect - perhaps the arris rail has shifted?)

Something weird with the bottom of the actual timber fence post tho' - what did that go in to in the ground? It's only extending a round 4" beyond the bottom of the fence, and has been cut square. If that had been simply slotted into a metal post holder, I wonder if that was the cause of the panel coming away - it was able to sway too much in the wind!

DHUK, can you show us where that timber post went?

Bradden

You have a closeboard fence there on recessed posts. I'm not a fan of this style of fencing as it's not as strong as closeboard on morticed post... but it's popular as you can run the featheredge over the posts which some prefer the look of.

The timber attached to the wall is called a wall plate and is also perfectly normal. as @princeofpounds said the other end is a little confusing form the photos.

One word of advice.. do not use screws to fix the.timber needs to be able to move. Ideally use a 65nn galvanised nail and leave the last knockings.. a couple of  mm to allow the wood to expand/contract. Screws prevent this movement and often cause the timber to split.

dhuk0208

Thank you all for your information, I checked with the site manager, he said this is "normal" since it is single fence connecting to a row of fences and a garage. They reattached the fence with nails and screws.