Where you live do they require a building permit to fix a fence?
Apparently they do in our city. The HOA will not let us fix our fence without a permit. The permit office says the process takes months and our fence is falling down.
Apparently a fence repair of any type requires a permit.
Yes, but it didn’t take nearly that long. In my case it was a fence that was on both my and my neighbour’s border, so we both needed to submit a permit application. He already had one in the system for a front gate, so they allowed an amendment to that for his. I applied separately. A hassle and a bit of money, but not too onerous.
How much “fixing” is required?
How much “fixing” is required?
We are replacing like for like 5’ privacy fence on 3 65’ runs.
But when I looked into it it says any fix needs a permit which surprised me.
And there are two or three separate inspections you have to schedule and skip work for.
The permits person told me that it was a bad time to put in a fence since the ground just unfroze and everyone wants to put in their fences now…
I don’t need no stinking permit.
Really, I don’t. At least I think I don’t. I put in a 4 foot chainlink fence around a small portion of our house (4.5 acres) so we can let the dogs out the back and know they won’t run off or have other dogs bother them.
After the hurricane caused so much damage in our county, it has been pretty much stated that you rebuild what you need to and worry about the permits later. Otherwise, nothing would get done because there would be 50,000 people at the building department trying to get a permit for something.
Yes, my town requires a permit for everything and they’re known for being a pain in the ass during whatever project is going on w/ numerous inspections and frequent delays/hassles for trivial stuff. Last year, I put up a new 6" fence (15" on both sides of the house and a ~75" run along one side of the backyard) without bothering with a permit. Fortunately, no inspectors happened by while I was working. The neighbor’s fence was falling down and he was clearly not in a hurry to do anything about it and since we have 2 dogs, I needed to get it done. Built my new fence alongside his and left his rotten fence in place to deal with at his convenience.
Months for a permit is crazy, I can’t imagine builders and commercial construction companies are waiting that long for building (or any trade) permits.
My municipality has gone to a web based system to apply for permits, but they still have an actual phone number to call for questions or to schedule an inspection. I would look for something like this in your area and absolutely blow up that number (politely) daily until you get an answer.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease with the local ahj in my area.
Good luck
You aren’t fixing a fence.
You are replacing a fence.
Where you live do they require a building permit to fix a fence?
Only if it is 7’ tall or higher. Fences 0-6’ are ok. Fences between 6’ and 7’ might need special zoning approval, but no permit.
Months for a permit is crazy, I can’t imagine builders and commercial construction companies are waiting that long for building (or any trade) permits.
Especially for a fence!
But, the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development is the body that gives building permits for hospitals. Their initial review of most projects is 90 days - the quickest I’ve ever seen is 85 days. New hospitals can take longer. After you respond to their comments, they have 30 days to give you a response to your response. etc. A building permit for hospital work in California could take 6 months.
No permit required by my county.
Thankfully I don’t have an HoA.
Is it an HoA or a City requirement for you?
.
**Months for a permit is crazy, I can’t imagine builders and commercial construction companies are waiting that long for building (or any trade) permits. **
My municipality has gone to a web based system to apply for permits, but they still have an actual phone number to call for questions or to schedule an inspection. I would look for something like this in your area and absolutely blow up that number (politely) daily until you get an answer.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease with the local ahj in my area.
Good luck
I work in residential construction. Here, depending on the municipality, a building permit for even a minor renovation takes around 2 months. If you make any structural changes (moving a wall, making a doorway or window opening bigger, etc) you need to engage a structural engineer, who adds another few weeks to the process, not to mention a couple of thousand dollars.
For most of my projects, I charge between 3-8k just to obtain building permits for a project. We need to have plans drawn up, a hazardous material survey done of the area to be worked on, possibly a structural engineer, geotechnical engineer, sometimes even a building envelope engineer all need to be involved.
To answer the OP, we are not required to get a permit for fence work. However, fences are subject to bylaws and need to be under a certain height and conform to a few other rules. Typically enforcement of these rules is just done on a complaint basis.
I wasn’t super clear -it’s not months for the initial permit- she told me that is how long most take by the time you get permits and inspections from when they start the process. Her comment was to expect it to take months.
Local here, that would fall under either the “same day” or “48 hour” approval windows. So, no biggie.
Permitting is subjective but basically if it is a replacement or repair, no permit, at least the places I’ve lived. It’s hard to imagine “fence repair of any type” requiring a permit because what if you wanted to hammer in a nail that had partially popped out? Or even replacing a section of fence. There has to be a subjective line that someone draws.
I took out a permit for a deck and the town did most of the "inspecting’ over the phone. Mostly because they were being nice, e.g. I was ready to pour concrete into post holes and rain was forecast and they didn’t inspect the framing because they were busy. They did the final inspection by peaking around the corner of the house at the deck and saying, “looks good.” After I saw how they really didn’t care, they just wanted something that wouldn’t fall over, I didn’t take out a permit for a 3 foot door I replaced with a sliding glass door nor for a 10 x 14 shed (that they’ll never see because of tree cover).
Not sure - I didn’t check. I just assumed that since you don’t need a permit to build a house here a fence would be OK.
We don’t allow fences.
Only if you are moving the fence or putting one up where there wasn’t one before. If you are taking one down and replacing it, then no.
city i live in made me remove the landscape tie that was separating the gravel shoulder and my grass.
apparently I was supposed to have a road use permit and contractor liability insurance
now I do work for a civil construction company so I “know” what those things are - but the insanity of needing this for a ground level piece of wood is absurd. They also stated I needed a road use permit and contractor liability insurance to remove the landscape tie. I managed to argue with them/sweet talk them into letting me do it myself (in like 5 minutes) and send photographic evidence. So painful.
Is it your HOA or the city that requires a permit? We took out an old wood fence and put in a new one and the neighbors on both sides loved it, they got a new free fence. Our city didn’t ask for a permit and the building inspector was looking at our permit for other construction during the fence redo and just said " nice fence".