Fence Repair

Wood posts rot in a narrow band a few inches around the soil line — and almost nowhere else. Deeper in the ground there's too little oxygen for decay fungi; above ground the wood dries out between waterings. Right at grade there's both moisture and air, which is exactly what rot needs. That's why a fence can look perfectly healthy and still go over in one storm: the posts were already gone at the base, and the wind just announced it.

On irrigated Peninsula lawns this happens years ahead of schedule. A sprinkler head that soaks a post twice a day is the single biggest fence killer in this climate — the dry California summer that would otherwise preserve the wood never gets a chance. A gate in that fence line that sags, drags or misses its latch is a repair of its own: see gate repair.

The honest rule of thumb: if the failed posts are isolated — one here, two there — and most boards are sound, repair wins by a wide margin. If posts are rotting at grade along the whole run and boards are brittle throughout, you're looking at a replacement conversation, and the contractor will tell you that from the photos rather than after a paid visit.

A repair done right isn't cosmetic. Replacing a post means pulling the old footing, setting the new post on a gravel base for drainage, and crowning the concrete above grade so water sheds away instead of pooling around the wood. A concrete collar poured flat or dished — the way many fences were originally built — holds water against the post like a bathtub and is often the reason it rotted in the first place.

Leaning fence sections · rotted and snapped posts · broken, warped, and missing boards · rails pulled loose from posts · storm damage · fence sections pulled down by vegetation.

Fence repair by town: Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Mountain View, plus the other Peninsula towns on the service-area list. A new fence in Atherton is written up separately: fence installation in Atherton.

What a repair has to survive is local: irrigation, soil and how close the run stands to the street.

Three photos tell most of the story: the base of the worst post close up, the full fence line from a distance showing the lean, and any broken boards. Send them through the form and get a realistic repair range before anyone drives out.