Whole fence made with gravel boards?

SurfingHamster

Any advice welcome on this - we currently have wooden fence with wooden posts (10 meters or approx 3 panels) and it is falling apart.

Separately to the years of wear and tear, our neighbours have a kid who regularly kicks a football in the fence (probably because our previous owners couldn’t care less about the state of the fence so they never told him to stop…).

We really want to replace it with something sturdier than wooden panels. I also want to avoid hearing that football rattling on our brand new fence if it’s made of wood.

The alternative is a concrete fence. We were just quoted £3k for precast concrete which I find steep.

I’m now wondering if it’s possible to have concrete posts with gravel boards all the way up, as this would effectively do the same job for a much cheaper price? Anyone with experience in this your advice would be great!

Albermarle

A concrete fence is not going to look great. Some people ( future buyers) do not even like concrete posts.
Presumably the boy next door is growing up and will get interested in other things at some point?
If you tell the neighbours you are going to put up an ugly concrete fence, they might agree to stop him kicking the ball against the fence.

subjecttocontract

I've seen it done a few times and it looks absolutely awful. It's not attractive and it probably devalues both properties. I guess you could grow a climber or similar in front of it but that's likely to take time to mature and won't be easy if it's a long span. Id come up with an alternative plan if I were you. Maybe put cheaper panels in place and tell the neighbour if they break it they pay for it.

CliveOfIndia

I'd agree with the previous comments - for sure it's possible to do this, but it'll look 'orrible, very "industrial" and not really what you want to be looking at when you're sitting outside trying to enjoy your garden.

Do you get on OK with the neighbours?  Things like this, very often they don't even realise it's causing a nuisance, and a friendly conversation can alleviate the issues.

As an aside, concrete posts with wooden panels have their pros and cons.  As mentioned by a previous poster, a lot of people don't like them.  But they do at least mean that the posts are there pretty much for good, and if a panel should break then it's easy and relatively cheap to just slide in a new panel.

born_again

Buy the boy a goal for the garden.

SurfingHamster

born_again said:

Buy the boy a goal for the garden.

Sadly he has one already but it's backed up against it and doesn't stop the misses hitting the fence. Part of me has thought of buying him one of those 'stop that ball' nets which would also prevent the balls from ending in our garden but they are not cheap...

Bradden

I'd suggest looking at the Durapost system..you can stack the gravelboards and they look great. Alternative suppliers are available.. I just know this product so can recommend it.

Ganga

I saw some fibreglass ones in B and Q the other week ,looked like wood but more durable ,did not check the price but would hopefully last longer than wood. 

Chloe_G

I can sympathise with you as my fence panels are now completely bowed out where the neighbours built raised beds against it and planted huge shrubs so it's going to knock the fence off the gravel boards soon.  I would really like those metal or composite panels as I don't want to keep replacing wooden boards.

Nobbie1967

You could just paint the concrete gravel boards with Ronseal Fencelife as it seems to bond well to it. Dark oak will make it look less austere. 

flashg67

I had a slope in my last garden and ended up two gravel boards high to allow the higher neighbours some privacy - it looked horrible - I covered it with wooden fence pails (uprights) on my side but your neighbours might not like it. I also made my own panels with 3x2 cross bars and 3x1 fence pails - you'd still hear a football but unlikely to get damaged by it.