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Instant fence & deck estimate
01 / 09Scarborough, 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.
Scarborough has a repair condition almost nowhere else in the GTA has: a regulated slope behind the yard. The Bluffs put a stability setback well inside the lot line through Cliffside, Guildwood and Fallingbrook, and on a bluff-top property the fence may legitimately not be allowed where the old one stood. We check that before quoting a like-for-like rebuild, because rebuilding a run inside the setback creates a problem that did not exist while the old fence was grandfathered in place.
Away from the bluff, Scarborough is largely post-war housing on flat, generous lots through Agincourt, West Hill and Highland Creek, and a lot of the original galvanized chain link is still standing. Chain link repair is a different trade from wood repair. The fabric rarely fails; the tension bars, bands and terminal posts do, and a bellied run usually means a terminal that has pulled rather than mesh that has stretched. Re-tensioning to a sound terminal is a fraction of the cost of new fabric, and where the terminal itself has gone we reset it below the 1.2 m frost line and re-stretch from there.
Scarborough is lake moderated with about 115 cm of snow a year and the mildest winter mean in the east end at roughly -3.7C. As downtown, mild means frequent cycling across freezing, and cycling at the soil line is what ends a wood post.
Permits come from Toronto Building, Scarborough District. A repair at existing height is exempt; the city's height rules are enforced on complaint, so a straightened fence that comes back taller than it was is the one repair that draws attention.
Lots here are narrow and most have no side drive, so posts, rails and concrete come down a walkway by hand and the spoil goes back out the same way. That crew time is real, and it puts Scarborough work in the upper part of the range shown above rather than the middle. Snowfall runs about 115 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.
Yes. Scarborough is part of the City of Toronto, so permits and height rules come from Toronto Building through the Scarborough District office, not a separate municipality. Practically that means the same exemption for a repair at the existing height, and the same pool enclosure requirements. It also means the same tree protection rules apply to a post hole near a large-caliper tree, which catches people who assume the suburbs are treated differently.
Because of when the neighbourhoods were built. Chain link went up across Guildwood, Birch Cliff and Agincourt as the standard property-line fence and a lot of it is still structurally fine. The usual repair is a bent terminal post, a stretched top rail or a gate that has dropped, and re-tensioning an existing run costs far less than replacing it. Where the bottom selvage has rusted through, that section is finished.
To 120 cm, with the old concrete broken out rather than drilled through. Scarborough's winter is lake-moderated, a mean near -3.7C on about 115 cm of snow, so frost is less punishing than it is in Vaughan. The depth does not change for that. A shallower post survives a mild winter and then moves in the first hard one, and the second visit costs more than the first one saved. Bluffs-side lots with slope get a stepped post line as well, set on the level rather than following the grade.
