Fence project planner
Plan a fence run: posts, holes, concrete, rails and pickets, plus the height rules that sit outside the building code and the installed price.
Measure the run along the ground, not along the property line on the plat — they are rarely the same thing, and only one of them is where you will be digging.
Shadowbox looks the same from both sides, which is the neighbourly choice and takes roughly twice the pickets. Each gate adds a post and about half a day.
Materials at ±12% and the permit fee at ±50% set this spread; the installed column is wider, at ±25%, because fencing bids vary more than lumber does.
- Plus 52 hours of your time — about 4 weekends with a helper.
- Materials, tool rental, and the permit fee if one applies.
- You need: a two-person auger, a string line and level, a helper on every post.
- All-in installed price — their materials, crew, and cleanup.
- One to two days on site with a powered auger.
- They will spot a property-line problem before it is built in.
Building the fence yourself keeps $1,338 — 41% of the contractor price — and costs you 52 hours. That is $26 an hour for your weekends. Before you commit to that, price what those hours are worth to you — on this project the money is thin enough that a quote is worth getting.
- The fence is under 7 ft, so the model building-code exemption covers it.
- Fence height and placement are set by local zoning and by HOA rules, not by the building code — front-yard and corner-visibility limits are routinely lower than 7 ft. Confirm both, and locate the property line before you set posts.
| Item | Qty | Unit | Line |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4×4 posts, 10 ftcheck ↗ | 15 posts | $13.50 | $203 |
| Fast-setting concrete, 60 lb bagscheck ↗ | 52 bags | $7.50 | $390 |
| 2×4 rails, 8 ft | 39 boards | $7.60 | $296 |
| Picketscheck ↗ | 219 pickets | $3.05 | $668 |
| Exterior screws | 1,314 screws | $0.06 | $79 |
| Post caps | 15 caps | $3.20 | $48 |
| Gate hardware (4 ft gates) | 1 kits | $48.00 | $48 |
| Materials subtotal | $1,732 |
Prices look wrong for your area? Edit them
Editable estimate · US national averages reviewed July 2026. Prices move; these are a starting point, not a quote. Every edit updates the totals, the band, and the link you share.
- 01Property line, 811 & layout4 h
Confirm the property line before anything else, call 811, then string the run and mark every post center.
- 02Digging post holes11 h
15 holes 36 in deep and 11 in across. Rent the auger — this is the phase that ends DIY fences.
- 03Setting & plumbing posts10 h
Set every post plumb to a string line, brace it, and let the concrete take before you hang anything.
- 04Rails7 h
3 rails per section, level rather than following the ground.
- 05Pickets15 h
219 pickets on a spacer block, checking plumb every fifth board.
- 06Gates3 h
Build the gate square with a diagonal brace running down to the hinge side.
- 07Caps, trim & cleanup3 h
Cap the posts, cut the picket tops to a line, and clear the spoil piles.
52 hours total — about 4 weekends for two people at 14 productive hours a weekend. Working alone, add roughly half again on every phase that needs a second pair of hands.
A fence is a repeating unit multiplied by a distance, which makes it the easiest of these projects to estimate and the easiest to get wrong by one systematic error repeated fifteen times. This planner divides the run into bays at your post spacing, takes one more post than bays, adds a post per gate, and then sizes the holes, the concrete, the rails, and the pickets off that layout.
The concrete figure is where most estimates go astray. A post hole is roughly three post-widths across and holds a cylinder of concrete — minus the post standing in the middle of it. Skipping that subtraction over-orders by about one bag in every three holes, which sounds like a rounding detail until you are carrying eight unnecessary bags of fast-setting mix back to the truck. Post depth is the deeper of one third of the fence's above-grade height, your local frost line, and a two-foot floor, because nothing shallower than two feet holds a fence upright through a windy winter regardless of what the arithmetic says.
Rail count steps with height: two rails up to four feet, three above that. It is encoded rather than asked, so a six-foot fence never quietly ships with a four-foot fence's rail count and a row of cupped pickets two summers later.
On permits, the building code is not the binding constraint for most fences and the page says so. The model code exempts fences up to seven feet, but local zoning routinely sets lower limits — six feet in a rear yard and four in a front yard are common — and adds setback and corner-visibility rules that an HOA can tighten further. So a code-exempt fence still reads "check locally" here, and the single most important thing to confirm before you set a post is where the property line actually runs.
sections = 100 ÷ 8 = 12.5 → 13 sections
posts = 13 + 1 + 1 gate post = 15 posts
depth = max(6 ÷ 3, 36 in frost, 24 in floor) = 36 in, so buy 10 ft posts
hole = 3 × 3.5 in = 10.5 in across
concrete per hole = π(5.25 in)² × 36 in − (3.5 × 3.5 × 36) = 1.55 cu ft
bags = 15 × 1.55 ÷ 0.45 = 51.6 → 52 bags
rails = 13 sections × 3 rails = 39 boards at 8 ft
pickets = 1200 in ÷ 5.5 in = 218.2 → 219 pickets
permit = 6 ft ≤ 7 ft ⇒ code-exempt, but check zoning and the HOA