Fence Questions

[Tom Mobley]

In my area there seems to be a lot of wooden fences being built. Next year I want to get involved in cleaning and finishing them. I've been a painter and deck finisher for years but I never really coated a fence. Is there a special way to price a fence? I know everyone has a different way of pricing but, I just wanted some input. Thanks

 

[reedsterstl]

Tom i use the ye ole square footage method. I figue out how many square feet per section and then multiply by the number of sections. What I charge per squar foot will depend upon how much work is involved. New fence - wash/seal approx 1.00 per sf, old fence wash/seal 1.35 per sf, if stripping is required I add approx $0.35 to the per sf price. Shadow boxes, (i try to avoid like the plague) usually run much much higher. For shadow boxes, I suggest you try one and figure out what your time is worth, but generally some where around $0.75 more per sf.

This works for me and my market, but what works for others will depend on their market. You should get a variety of responces here and use "all" the info to set up your price guide.

reedster

 

[Peirce]

Fences

Tom,

My suggestion to you is to get these fences when they are first put up. If they are cedar you can seal them right away as long as they are dry. Pressure treated can take a while to dry out.
You also have to make sure that they are not treated with a water repellent at the factory (pressure treated). Get them before they start to turn grey and you can save the cleaning step and make it more attractive money wise to your customer.

Peirce

Also:
Try to find out who is building the fences and approach them with
reffering you to seal them.

 

[JR Wood]

I charge $1.50 per linear ft. per side for picketts and $2 per linear ft. per side for shadow box.Either way I make over $60 per hour.
I am pretty sure I could never get away with charging $1 per sq. ft. That would be $80 per section.You can get the fence replaced for that!

 

[Greg Rentschler]

Tom,

We charge $2.00 per linear ft (per side) to restore and seal plus the cost of the product to be applied.... typically Ready Seal Light Brown at $xx.xx per gallon New fencing is a cake walk ... the older fencing we typically clean with a bleach solution followed by an oxalic bath. Fencing tends to fur rather easily so keep the pressure down when cleaning.

 

[Jon Fife]

hey guys,

greg, do you guys just use the light brown on cedar?? Is that the RS product that gives the truest cedar-color on cedar wood??

My prices go as so;

6' privacy to clean/strip and seal is $6 per ft, little less if a huge fence.

shadow box 6' is $8 dollars per ft,

these prices include clean & seal, us providing product. You have got to remember that when doing shadow box you are doing 50% more wood. My price is for both sides.

People are always shocked at fence prices; let them know they require a huge amount of product and you can usually expect close to 4yrs protection. Like JR said, replacement is not that much more expensive. Let them know how time consuming the work is and that they are doing their part to help the environment by protecting their wood and not replacing. Also let them know that once you do the work, future restoration costs will be avoided since you will be the one that will maintain it, and it will only need a light cleaning and light re-coat.

Jon Fife
Nashville,TN

 

[Jim Bilyeu]

Hi Guys,

Just reading some of the pricing and was just wondering if any of you have priced out ceder fencing or are you just guessing at the replacement costs.

Out here a 6 foot ceder privacy fence will run between 20 and 30 dollars per foot installed depending on design. A 6 foot shadow box ceder fence will run between 20 to over 100 dollars per foot depending on design. It's hard for me to believe that there is that kind of defference in replacement costs. 90 % of our ceder is being brought in from Canada so the cost of material should be pretty much the same. If there is that much difference, it has to be in the labor.

I'm just wondering about this. If any of you have some hard figures on replacemant costs, let me know.

Jim Bilyeu
Exterior Woodcare

 

[Greg Rentschler]

Hi Jon,

We use the RS Light Brown on every fence, cedar or pine. People usually want to keep it as close to natural and it does the job. If they wanted to go darker we would, its just not typically the situation.

 

[Greg Rentschler]

Cedar Fence with Ready Seal Light Brown Applied

 

[reedsterstl]

As Jon said, there is a lot of work doing fences. If it is on "old" fence, the amount of sealer required is unreal. I use the natural cedar color for the fact it does make an old fence look like new again. Here in St Peters, 90% of my fence projects are privacy fences. 6x8'. So my prices include everything, if I have to repair a gate or replace a picket or post, then the repair cost is added.

 

[Greg Rentschler]

arg......

 

[reedsterstl]

bet that was fun! What type and color of sealer is that? I like the look. And, please tell me how you get your pics to display, I seem to have a great deal of trouble getting mine to post. Where do you upload them from a windows folder?

 

[Jon Fife]

hey guys,

thanks for the info greg. That pic looks great, I'll have to try that RS light brown on cedar wood sometime.

mr bilyeu, I believe at home depot a 6' fence board is $1 for pressure treated and $2 for cedar. I could be wrong, but i recall these prices on a display they had, but these could have been seconds or some poor-quality wood.

i know this; the fencing contractor that referrs me on jobs charges between 9-16 dollars per ft to build a fence, but that may be with the homowner paying separate for the wood, i don't know, i'll ask.

Jon Fife
Nashville,TN

hey greg, is that normally how you do your jobs, a bid for labor and the homeowner pays separate for material?? Do people seem to like this kind of bid??

 

[Greg Rentschler]

Jon,

That is how we bid all of our projects. We bid a price for the product required, then the labor to restore and apply to the decking, railings, lattice, and steps. Everything is broken down. I have had pretty good results with this method overall. This also allows me to make adjustments on the product required if the project really soakes it up.



Reedster,

I pull my files from our web site and out of the windows directory on the computer (upload). Most have to be resized quite a bit before they can be uploaded. They typically start out at 300,000 to 500,000 bytes from the camera.

Ready Seal Light Brown on a Cedar Picket Fence. Actually it was quite easy to seal.... I sent 2 employees to do it .

 

[Jon Fife]

Mr bilyeu,


did some checking. I went and bid a fence today that was 248 linear ft long, 6' tall shadowbox made out of red cedar. my price to restore and seal was $1984.00, both sides us providing material. That was $8 dollars per ft.

I asked the lady what the fence cost to put up (about 6 months old) and she said $3300. She said the guy gave her a great deal because he wanted to make his name known in that subdivision. His price was about $13.25 per ft. at $16 per ft., he would have been closer to $4000 to build the fence.

Jon Fife
Nashville,TN

mr bilyeu, couple of weeks ago you posted about a cedar lodge you tried to clean that was crusted-black. You said you tried two helpings of stripex with success. I was just wondering, wouldn't this be a situation to corn blast?? Seems like it would save lots of man-hours, and the felted wood is going to happen either way. I'd like to hear you thoughts on this. Hope all is well in Nevada, have a good weekend

 

[JR Wood]

Hmmm... it seems like fence hangers are making more than doctors or lawyers these days.

 

[Aplus]

Yeah, there's some serious dough to be made as a fence contractor. The prices quoted in past posts are accurate for my area. I've tried getting in with a couple, to handle their staining and cleaning requests. I haven't had much luck with that. Both I talked to wanted me to grease their palms very seriously for leads. Not that I'm opposed to that, but they were wanting about 25% of the proceeds, and I'm not willing to give that much up, or, charge people that much more.

One of the locals is offering pre-stained fences, and they spray all the boards with TWP before assembling the fence. Actually, it comes out better then I could ever do, 100% coverage, which is really good to have as a first application. He gets $5 per foot (both) sides for the pre-staining. Not a bad add-on, heh?

 

[Jim Bilyeu]

Hello Jon,

In answer to your question about using the corn blaster on this lodge.

There are 21 buildings, 4 to 6 condo's in each of the building. These condo's are used year round. There is no way that they can shut down a section to allow corn blasting or sand blasting. It is a safty issue along with the dust issue.

I have seen what corn blasting does to cedar siding and so have some of the owners. Corn blasting would tear the siding up to much. Felting we can handle without to much trouble but the damage that would be caused by corn blasting is another story.

You saw what corn blasting did to the sales office at TN. Log Homes, those logs were hard, think what it would do to soft cedar?

Hope your doing well in TN. Are you getting some of that rain I've seen on TV?? 8 days left before vacation in Hawaii.

Take care, talk with you later.

Jim Bilyeu
Exterior Woodcare