Fence installation and repair for Avon homeowners

A young town with a lot of fences aging at once

Travel between US 36 and US 40 and you can count the farmhouses on one hand. The rest is tract housing, built a section at a time, and the backyard fence was often the first project a new owner tackled once the association signed off.

That first generation is now wearing out on a schedule. Pickets crack, rails let go of their nails and posts lean a few degrees further every spring. Since whole streets were fenced within a season or two of each other, it is common for three or four adjoining yards to hit the same problems together. A rear line may even be shared, with posts that technically belong to the house behind you, and that question deserves an answer before any demolition starts.

What sits under an Avon lawn

Builders here generally scraped off the topsoil, moved earth around to match an engineered drainage plan and rolled it tight before pouring foundations. The upshot is that a fence post on many Avon lots goes into reworked clay and fill rather than native ground that has settled for centuries. That material bakes nearly solid in a dry August and turns to modeling clay in a wet March, and the glacial till below it lets water through so grudgingly that a fresh hole can hold rainwater like a bucket.

Put that soil through a Hendricks County winter and the classic complaint follows: posts that jack upward or tilt after a season of freezing and thawing. The answer is a footing that bottoms out beneath the frost and has somewhere for water to go, with the required depth coming from the building authority for your address. Footing choices are explained on the fence installation page, and posts that have already shifted are handled on the fence repair page.

The grassy channel along the back line

Most Avon subdivisions route stormwater down shallow grassed ditches that run along shared rear lines toward a retention pond or a curb inlet. Those swales are normally covered by an easement on the recorded plat, and the plat language decides whether anything may cross them. Some allow a fence as long as runoff keeps moving, some forbid it outright, and the association or the town can layer its own conditions on top.

Posts in the channel bottom stay saturated, which shortens the life of wood and loosens footings of every kind. A solid panel pressed to the grass can catch leaves and mulch until water ponds on the uphill side. Shifting the line to the dry shoulder of the swale, holding the bottom rail up off the ground, or switching to an open design for that one section are the usual workarounds.

Getting the architectural committee on board

Nearly every newer neighborhood in town has an association with a review board, and fence requests are a large share of what those boards read. Covenants can name the style, height, material, color and even which face of the fence points outward. The town of Avon or Hendricks County may also want a permit, depending on which side of the town limits the parcel sits, so treat those as two separate approvals. A request packet that moves quickly usually includes:

• Your plat or survey drawing with the proposed line, corners and gate openings sketched in.
• A brochure page or photo of the exact product and style you plan to use.
• The finished height and color, stated plainly.
• Notes on where the new fence meets a neighbor's fence and which old sections will be removed.

Pool barriers and dog runs top the request list

Avon draws a lot of families with kids, and that produces two recurring projects. A new backyard pool reshapes the whole fence plan, since the enclosure falls under the adopted barrier code and typically has to pass an inspection. Ornamental metal shows up in a lot of those yards, and the gate hardware questions are worked through on the aluminum fence page.

The other is a dog that needs a secure yard. Owners want a height the animal cannot scale, a bottom edge with no gap to tunnel under and a gate latch that holds up to being opened ten times a day. Black or green chain link works well where covenants permit it, and a solid wood privacy fence has the added benefit of hiding the joggers a dog loves to bark at.

Why two Avon yards on one street price differently

The contractor works out the price after seeing the property in person, and on lots in this town the following tend to make the difference:

• Linear footage, plus how many corners, end posts and gate openings the layout needs.
• The amount of fall from the house toward the pond, swale or next lot.
• Gaps between houses so tight that every post and panel gets carried in by hand.
• Sprinkler heads, planting beds, patio edges and swing sets sitting close to the line.
• Tearing out an old fence, especially one with posts sunk in large concrete plugs.
• Connections to adjoining fences and stretches that must match a style the board approved.

Prepare once, and judge contractors on the basics

When picking who does the work, reviews in a fast-growing suburb mostly come down to fundamentals: arriving on the day agreed, leaving the lawn clean, managing the association paperwork without drama and returning if a post settles. Next-door Plainfield deals with much of the same soil, and the other communities served are listed on the areas page.

1. Dig out the plat or survey from the closing folder and mark the swale and any easement lines.
2. Take pictures along the whole run, at each planned gate and of anything being removed.
3. Download your association's fence standards and submit the review request.
4. Pass along the address, the pictures and where the approval stands using the contact page.
5. Ahead of the dig, a locate ticket goes to Indiana 811 so buried lines are flagged.

Common questions here

The work, by type

Elsewhere in the Indianapolis area