Fence installation in Aberdeen

Replacement, nearly all of it

Aberdeen is established, sits near Flat Creek Country Club and Blue Smoke Park, and its lots were fenced a long time ago.

So the work is rarely a bare boundary. It is taking something out, dealing with what is left in the ground, and putting a new run in its place. That is a different job from a first installation. It is priced differently too.

What taking the old fence out adds

Removal and haul away is a line of its own, charged on top of the per foot price for the new fence.

It is the line people forget when comparing quotes. A price that looks lower may simply have left it out, and the new fence cannot go in until the old one is gone. Check that both figures appear on both quotes.

Old concrete is what turns a half day into a full one. A post set in a big collar has to be broken out rather than pulled, and nobody can see that from the street.

Can the old post holes be reused?

Almost never. It is worth understanding why not.

The old hole is usually the reason the old fence leaned. Red clay holds water against a post, swells and shrinks with it, and works a shallow post loose over enough wet winters. Setting a new post into that same disturbed, compacted hole repeats the mistake with newer timber.

A proper reset means a clean hole 30 to 36 inches deep with six to eight inches of gravel underneath, so the water drains instead of standing there. That is what separates a fence lasting fifteen years from one visibly out of true by its third spring.

Boundaries are not always where people think

In Aberdeen it matters more than in the newer villages.

A fence installed decades ago may sit a foot off the true line, and once the new run goes in on the correct boundary the change is obvious to everyone either side. Pull the plat, the survey drawing of your lot, out of the closing package before work starts.

That same plat shows any easement or cart path setback, which is the other thing deciding where the new line can actually go.

An old fence does not carry its permission forward

The original may well have gone in without a permit, either because the rule was different then or because nobody asked. None of that carries over.

A building permit is required at four feet and taller, and the threshold is about height rather than about whether something stood there before. So a replacement in Aberdeen has to meet the ordinance exactly as it stands now, whatever the fence it replaces was allowed to do. Ask before you order material.