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A few questions, a range in about a minute. The calculator uses the rates we quote with — a site visit pins the exact number.
Instant fence & deck estimate
01 / 09Hamilton, Ontario
A straight answer on whether your fence is worth keeping, with the posts probed at grade — and a line-item price for the replacement when it is not.
Hamilton is the hardest fence repair geography in our service area, and it is because of the escarpment. Below the mountain, the yards are flat century-home lots with shale close to the surface. Above it, the yards step down a slope. A leaning post means something different in each case, so the first question on a Hamilton estimate is which side of the escarpment the property sits on.
On the lower city streets through Durand and the north end, shale often stops a post hole short of depth. Where a previous installer hit rock and stopped at two feet, the post has been heaving every winter since, and straightening it without going deeper just buys a year. Hamilton takes 160 cm of snow a year, the most of any municipality we serve, and the escarpment snowbelt loads a fence with wet spring snow for weeks longer than the lakeshore towns get. That is a real structural load on a run that is already short on embedment.
Above the mountain, through Ancaster and parts of Dundas and Waterdown, the problem is lateral. A fence on a slope wants to walk downhill, and the posts on the low end of the run carry the accumulated push of everything above them. We reset those with the full 1.2 m embedment and, where the grade is severe, step the run rather than rake it.
Permits come from the City of Hamilton Building Division. Repair at existing height is exempt. Stoney Creek and Waterdown properties near the escarpment brow should be checked before any fence repair in Hamilton begins, and checked for a conservation regulated area before any digging, because that approval is separate from the city and takes longer than the repair does.
Access splits street by street. The older blocks near the core are hand-carry and price toward the top of the range above; the subdivisions have a side drive and sit near the bottom. Which one applies to a given Hamilton property is settled on the site visit, not assumed. Snowfall runs about 160 cm a year here, and that is what sets the railing and substructure spec rather than the fence rate. Footings go below the 120 cm frost line either way.
It changes the snow load more than the frost. Hamilton sits in the escarpment snowbelt and takes about 160 cm a year, the heaviest in our service area, on a winter mean near -4.2C. Drifting against a solid privacy panel puts a lateral load on the posts that a picket fence never sees, and above the escarpment in Ancaster and Dundas that load is worse than it is down in Westdale. Where a run has already racked, we brace it as part of the repair.
Yes, and piecemeal is usually the right answer on those lots. Pre-survey blocks in the lower city have lines that wander, so each bay gets measured and cut on site rather than dropped in as a stock panel. That is slower per foot than a new subdivision run and we quote it that way. Cedar and pressure-treated pine both take a scribed cut cleanly, which is part of why they stay the common repair material here.
More often than people assume. Chain link is still common on Hamilton property lines, and the failure is nearly always a bent terminal post or a stretched top rail rather than the fabric. Replacing the post and re-tensioning the run costs a fraction of new fence and lasts. When the fabric itself has rusted through at the bottom selvage, that section is finished and we will tell you plainly. Permits for either sit with the City of Hamilton Building Division and a same-height repair is exempt.
