Flling a Lot and adding a Fence

Mashuginah25 · 01-30-2009, 07:38 PM

I was curious...

We just bought a home that is new construction and we are looking to fill the backyard where the sloped the yard cause it takes about 8-10ft off of our backyard.

Now to the actual question....

we are going to put in a black chain link fence around the backyard and are curious if we should fill the lot after they put in the fence or before we put in the fence?

We were thinking about if we did it after we would be filling it exactly to the edge of our lot and not messing with the neighbors lot, but then we realized they would be putting the at the bottom of the slope which would essentially cut a couple feet off the height of the fence once we filled the lot. Another thing is if we do it before we are curious if the dirt will be too loose to actually hold the fence securely and the dog s will just dig under.

I know this was a long ? but any ideas?

Kap · 01-30-2009, 10:43 PM

So is this going to make an 8-10 foot wall of dirt at the edge of your neighbor's property? What's going to hold it up? Retaining wall?

jmb324 · 01-31-2009, 12:22 AM

sounds like youre going to need something to support the sloping yard and fence.
as Kap said... possibly a retaining wall, its hard to tell without more details.
Dirt can be compacted to speed up the settling but will still have a natural fall of settling over time....and there is going to be something needed to keep the dirt from washing away, grass(sod), mulch etc. as for the dogs--the fence companies make several products that install into the ground/fence line to help prevent digging and escape.

Mashuginah25 · 01-31-2009, 02:52 AM

Well I guess we were thinking it would just slope out steeper rather than the gradual slope it now has.

No it will not cause a wall of dirt 8-10 ft high, as the neighbors yard is also a new construction lot so all of their edges slope too, ours just wouldnt be as gradual it would be steeper.

Right now is begins to slope at 18 ft from the house and gradual goes down 2 ft over the 9 ft span like at a ski resort a bunny slope is very gradual, we would just slope it 25ft from the house and it would descend 2ft in a 2ft span rather than a 9ft one, more like a double black diamond ski slope.

Bondo · 01-31-2009, 08:40 AM

Ayuh,...

Always finish the Grade work 1st, before installing Fencing or any other improvements...

DIY_JC · 01-31-2009, 08:52 AM

We are going through a similar situation with our house (are we neighbors?). We received many quotes from fence companies before & during the excavation process. Every one of them wanted to wait until the excavation was complete beforehand to give a 'true' estimate. Also, the price of clean fill is much higher than the rocky stuff. For us, they put down a lot of the cheaper stuff first which consisted of many small boulders (stuff you wouldn't want to lift). That being the case, all the fence companies will charge a lot more ($125-150/hr) if they hit rock when installing the fence. It pretty much defeats the need to have them install the fence (rocks are why I wouldn't want to do it) imo. Just some things to consider...

DecksEtc · 01-31-2009, 05:35 PM

You are going to want to ensure that you have the final grading clearance from your local municipality before any fence goes up. Also, you need to make sure that you adding all the fill is not going to affect drainage, etc. for your neighbours - if you cause flooding on someone elses property you are going to have problems.