How to Build a Fence on a Slope

basic pattern will incorporate four-foot panels that step down the hills on the side of this walkout lot the fence expands to 8-foot sections when it reaches level ground privacy is in the consideration along the back of the lot so we'll build a lower fence that will frame the view of the woods whatever fence design you end up with there's a little research he'll have to do as you plan your fence contact your local town or city or residential Association if you have one of those and find out if there are any restrictions for fence construction and check out your setbacks make sure that you can build right up to your property line and be sure to check for buried cables and pipes utilities will come out and mark these with spray-paint make sure you know where your property lines are it's a good idea to have a surveyor come out and stake your property before you begin once you've done this you can stake out the position for the new fence we're gonna start by locating the posts you pound a stake in at one end of the fence you pawned a stake in at the other and you stretch a line between them the fence is running parallel to the property line but set six inches on our side of it so we measure over from the stakes that mark the property line to set our fence location on the hills we're going to have stepped fence sections so the layout on the fence here is a little more involved because our design calls for each section of fence to be level and to go down the hill the layout lines need to be level two so we ran this first line along the slope or grade of the hill to give us the straight line of our fence now we'll put in a taller stake and run a level line to it from the top of the hill all right the stake is plumbed to the line of the fence but it's still tall enough so we can run a level line from the top of the hill where the fence begins we use a line level to get this line perfectly straight alright that looks pretty good level wise ok come a little higher a little more a little more ooh perfect right there yeah now to mark the location on the post for these lines on this level section our posts are eight feet apart so we're using a piece of 2x2 cut to that length to help us mark them okay Joe I've got this one we mark the position of our first post and then measure out on our line to mark the rest of the post along the level section of fence okay Jojo I got it now the next section of fence is four feet long so using a level and a four foot piece of 2x2 will plumb up from our last mark and transfer the 4-foot dimension over to our grade line got it there perfect then we keep measuring off our four foot post locations until we get to the end of the fence okay for the time being we're gonna remove the base line but we'll leave our stakes in place so we can restring the line when we go to set our posts now when we first strung our lines we were actually marking the outside edge of the post but we don't want to Center our post directly under the line so we're going to measure over two and three-quarters inches away from the line that's precisely half the width of our post so we just measure it and Mark it and we're set okay Jojo right there sure yeah we repeat this all the way along this stretch of fence now we can take down the rest of the building lines you can also get rid of this tall stake once all of our post holes are dug we're going to restring these lines to help us locate the posts and if we leave the stakes in we won't have to duplicate some of the measuring we just did the lines will still be in the same place because we knew we'd be doing this from the very beginning we ran the line out past the end of the fence this way we knew the stakes wouldn't get in the way of the holes we bidding for the posts we have a different layout problem for the fence along the back of the property we want to come off the neighbor's fence at a right angle and we figured this using what's called the three four five method we measure along the fence three feet and make a mark is that good let me mark it okay go ahead then we measure out four feet on a string we've run and make another mark by moving the string back and forth until a distance between the mark on the string and the mark on the fence is exactly 5 feet we create a perfect right angle now we use our marks to extend this line all the way across the back we'll need it for alignment when we put in the posts along here okay now bring it toward me just a little bit a little bit more oh right there right there you got it you got it good again our lines represent the edges of the posts so we offset our post centers back from the lines to dig the holes for our posts I'm starting out with a clamshell digger the goal here is to get this footing 12 inches wide 42 inches deep dating lots of holes with this tool is time-consuming and tiring so you may want to rent a power auger for this part of the job you can get a power auger just about any rental Center this is a two-person tool but it'll really cut down on our digging time the power auger is like a giant corkscrew attached to a gas engine this model takes four hands to run it you have to pull the auger up every now and then to clear some of the dirt out of the hole one of the drawbacks of this tool is that you can't control where the dirt spills so there will be a little more raking and weakening up to do when we're all done even with the power auger digging postholes are still tough work along the back of our lot the soil is thick and muddy so we have to clear the bit off so are we at the right depth well we're not even close on this one and it's some real muck in fact the soil is so hard here were preborn with an 8-inch bit and then finishing off the holes with a twelve inch drill bit when you're drilling on a slope the auger has a tendency to slide down the hill as you start so it's a good idea to start the hole with the hand digger and then use the auger again and there will be rocks or in our case pieces of concrete rubble when you find these you just have to dig them out by hand we only went down 42 inches on some of our post holes that's because the posts in the middle the fence run or the line post can be a little bit shallower than the end post corner post or post around a gate so why do we go 42 inches on our end posts we've taken a couple of things into consideration first of all it's a general rule of thumb that a third of the height of the post goes below ground in other words our posts will be six feet above the top of the surface of the ground so we need at least two feet below the surface except for corner gate and end posts such as this one for them you want at least half the height of the post to be underground for instance we're going to have a post here that's six feet above ground that means really we need to use a nine foot post so three feet of it can be underground but still that's only thirty six inches we decided to go 42 inches below the surface so we'd get below the frost line so what's a frost line you may ask the frost line is how far down the ground will freeze in the wintertime in our area most building codes specify that it's 42 inches when the ground freezes the moisture in it expands lifting the ground up a little if the bottom of the post is in the middle of the frozen ground then it will lift up a little and shift and generally start to get crooked by putting the post below the frost line the ground can heave all at once but the post will stay in the same place obviously in warmer climates the frost line isn't as deep so the rule of thumb about keeping your line post at least a third of the way underground and your gate corner and end post at least half way underground still applies now we can restring the lines that we use to locate the post so we can locate the post again as we install them by using bags of dry concrete mix you can mix up what you need for a post or two when you mix concrete always add the water to the dry mix not the other way around then mix it until it's got a thick consistency each 60 pound bag makes up about a half a cubic foot of concrete we think each post will take about four or five bags so that's all we're gonna mix up for now as soon as the concrete's ready to go we position our first post our reference point for this post is the retaining wall we set at eight and a half inches out from the wall in the other direction we line up the edge along the layout string we also use a four-foot level to make sure that the post is plumb plumb in both directions they're perfect not an inch as we start to put the concrete in you want to be gentle you don't want to shift the post around at all we keep an eye on the levels as we fill the hole up and we also use a pole to remove any air pockets from the concrete when you get to the top fill the hole up a little higher than the ground and then slope the concrete away from the post a little bit this keeps water from running down between the post and the concrete once all the concrete's in we want to brace the post in position while the concrete cures a couple of scrap pieces of one Bible work just fine for this but be careful not to jiggle the post around too much while you're nailing it in the line posts don't require as much construction in fact you can usually just set them in dirt you got that yep and we also cut a spacer to a length of ninety two and a half inches and that's the exact distance between the edges of two posts we're going to use these all the way down the line okay drawing is pretty close you wanna grab the level sure and you're right not bad let me just hit it Oh perfect perfect perfect sweet check yep we're ready for dirt great when the post is in position we begin shoveling dirt into the hole once we've got three or four inches of dirt in we pack the dirt down using the end of a one by two then we keep filling it up and tapping it down at the top we slope the dirt away from the post just like we did with the concrete okay alright with all the posts in now we want to cut the tops off to the proper height in this step section of the fence each post will be ten and five eighths inch lorb as we go down the hill so it's just a matter of leveling across right right there and then measuring down for each post that's perfect okay now we can cut the post to height with four by six posts it takes two passes with a circular saw to cut the lumber now that we can start installing the fencing material you'll find that the whole process speeds up quite a bit say could you get that one sure the first thing that we'll do is install the stringers these are the pieces of lumber that run horizontally between the posts they also support all the fencing material with our design the fence begins six inches down from the tops of the posts and the first stringer is 18 inches down we measure these dimensions on the uphill side of each post and use a square to mark across we cut this 2x4 to length and now we're going to toenail it to the post using 16 penny galvanized casing nails okay if you hold that steady I'm saying any nails you use on a fence should be double dipped galvanized if the nail rust not only cannot loosen up a little but the rust can discolor the wood and bleed through the painter stain and we set these nails below the surface of the wood our first stringer was a 2x4 centered on the post our next one is a two by six the bottom rail here runs parallel to the grade which means it'll intersect the posterior and angle so we'll just hold it down here about three inches off grade and then Mark those angles okay to make the beveled cut I've set the circular saw to cut at the proper angle all right tell me when you there we toenail this bottom stringer and also as we move along we're double checking to make sure that we don't knock our posts out of plumb and that our stringers are going in square we're still okay aren't we oh yeah okay our fence sections will consist of one by sixes sandwich between a couple of frames of two by twos our next step is to establish our first frame of two by twos on this side of the fence the top and bottom frame pieces run the full width of the panel for the top piece I nail it into the underside of the top strand with a penny galvanized nails I've set it back three quarters of an inch from the edge of the stringer this will Center the fence panel on the post the bottom frame piece had to be marked and cut on a bevel just like we did for the bottom stringer this piece nails on the top of the stringer now we mark and cut the side frame pieces these are nailed directly into the posts these should fit snugly up under the top frame piece this will help support the top frame and the stringer above it which is only toe nailed the opening for our fence boards is forty four and a half inches but our five and a half inch wide boards don't fit that space evenly but rather than have one narrow size board on the end we can split the difference and we can Center these boards that are full size and then cut two narrower boards for either side and that will give us some balance and symmetry to help us keep the board spacing symmetrical we'll start with the board's at the center we set the first board on its mark and plumb it down then we can mark across the bottom for the length and the angle okay that looks good you want to hold it we use six penny box nails to nail the board onto the 2x2 frame two nails at the top and two at the bottom then we mark cut and nail the rest of the boards working out toward the sides and using a small block to put a quarter inch gap between the boards okay now for the top of the fence what we're going to do up here is run two by twos vertically between the top two stringers we're going to position these two by twos directly over the quarter inch gap on the one by sixes underneath and we'll transfer the measurements onto this two by six okay at five and 1/8 okay we're on a speed square crosser and then we'll use spacer bars to position them accurately well that takes care of the first panel we took this one all the way through just to give you an idea of all the steps involved now realize a pan like this with so many different pieces there are much more efficient ways of building it for instance it's a lot faster to install all the stringers on all the panels at once and then come back and start on the frame pieces that way you're not constantly changing tools and nail sizes now when you cut the frame pieces cut the front and back pieces at the same time since they are identical and probably while one person's working on the frame the other can trail along behind and work on the

Channel: You Landscaping

Views: 912,343

Keywords: How to build, fence on slope, Installing fencing, fencing on a slope

Id: qSRcXc9RcSM

Length: 20min 17sec (1217 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2015