Wood Privacy Fence · Cambridge
Wood Privacy Fence Installation in Cambridge
A six-foot board fence is the right answer in Cambridge more often than anywhere else nearby, for a simple reason: the by-law tops out at 2.1 metres, so six feet is close to the ceiling rather than a compromise.
Behind the building line Cambridge allows a fence to 2.1 metres — the City puts that at 6.9 feet. A standard six-foot board fence fits comfortably. The eight-foot fence available a few minutes north in Kitchener and Waterloo is not on the table here, and that catches people who have been given confident advice by a friend or a contractor who mostly works up the road. In front of the building line the residential limit drops to 0.9 metres, and on a corner lot nothing over 0.75 metres goes inside the daylighting triangle. Those three numbers decide the layout before any material is priced.
What makes it last
- Post depth. Posts sit below the depth frost reaches. In the graded clay of the newer development toward the 401, a shallow post will be standing proud after one bad winter and it does not settle back. The Building Code requires footings below frost penetration and the City's building division is who confirms the figure for your lot.
- Three rails on a six-foot fence. Small material cost, and the difference between boards that stay flat and boards that cup away from the rail after two summers.
- Treated posts whatever the boards are. The material you look at and the material in the wet ground are two different decisions.
- Something at the bottom. Boards resting on soil wick water and rot upward. A gap, or a replaceable rot board, costs very little and saves a run.
Old Galt ground
The older streets through Galt, and parts of Preston and Hespeler, hide things. Stone, old foundations, buried rubble from a building that came down eighty years ago, a filled cistern exactly where a post should go. On those lots a post hole is not a predictable unit of work, and an honest quote says what happens if the auger stops. Mature trees are the other constant: roots move post positions, and moving a post changes the spacing of the run, which is a design decision worth making at the quote rather than improvising on the day. Cutting a major root to preserve a straight line is a poor trade — the tree is worth more than the fence.
New builds and the swale
On the newer subdivisions there is a drainage swale between properties that appears on a lot-grading plan filed with the City. A fence with a solid bottom rail dropped into it dams the water and hands the problem to whoever is downhill, which is how a new fence becomes a neighbour dispute. On those lots the bottom of the fence gets planned around the drainage.
Frequently asked questions
Can I go to 8 feet like in Kitchener?
No. Cambridge By-law 92-05 caps it at 2.1 metres, about 6.9 feet, behind the building line. Kitchener and Waterloo allow 2.44 metres. Same region, different by-laws, and this is the most common mistake we correct.
Which side should the finished side face?
No Cambridge by-law dictates it; convention is that it faces out. If it is likely to cause friction, a board-on-board or shadowbox fence looks the same from both sides and removes the question.
Can you stain it straight away?
Not on new pressure-treated lumber — it holds mill moisture and stain will not take evenly until it has dried, usually a season. Staining too early is why a lot of fences look patchy a year in.
Serving Cambridge and surrounding areas. Contact us for a no-obligation quote specific to your property.