Fence Parts

A fence is a popular means to mark the boundary of your home and the garden. But fences don't have to look boring. You can turn your fence into a beautiful addition to your garden using the right type of fence parts.

Every gardener knows the pain of seeing the flowers and plants you put your heart and soul into gnawed by stray animals. The best way to keep out those animals from your hard is to build a protective fence around the garden. This will give you peace of mind and also can be an aesthetic boost to your home. Read this article to find out more about garden fences and fence parts. Having a better understanding of them will help you make the right choices while you are shopping for them.

Essential components of garden fencing

Do you know the hardest part of building a fence around your garden? Well, the hardest part is deciding what type of fence you want and what type of materials you want to use for building it. Moreover, this can dictate the aesthetic and physical properties of the fence. Each type of fence has its own look and feel. The trick is to find the right combination of materials and design that goes well with the design of your house and also your neighbourhood. Here is a list of the essential fence parts that you will use for constructing a fence.

Posts

The most important part of any kind of fence is, of course, the vertical post that supports all the horizontal elements. In order for the fence post to be sturdy enough to support the weight of the horizontal parts, the posts should be planted sufficiently deep inside the ground. Also, the post themselves should be strong enough to support them. Therefore, you should be careful while buying posts as well as fixing them in the ground. Furthermore, if you live in a place with extremely cold winters, then you will have to fix the posts further deep in the ground to counter the effects of heaving.

Rails

Basically, rails are the primary horizontal structures of the fence that runs parallel to the ground. It is the rails that hold the spanking wooden pieces. Rails connect one post to the other and also provides support to the fence boards and other fence parts. The number of fence rails can vary. In some cases, you will find three or four fence rails. However, the minimum number of rails that a fence should have to support the fence panels is two. Fixing fence panels on just one rail will cause too much stress on the rails will result in structural failure.

Panels and boards

This is the third essential component of a fence. After installing the posts and the rails connecting the posts, you need panels and boards to fill in between them. In fact, it is these panels that make the fence functional. The good news is that installing panels and boards is easier than installing rails and posts. So, in case you are doing the fence work all by yourself, the hardest part is over by the time you start nailing fence panels to the rails. You can either use traditional wooden boards or more modern prefabricated fence panels for this purpose.

Fence decorations

Keep in mind that the fence is also a part of your house and therefore can significantly impact the design and look of your house. While it takes less work to build a basic looking fence, you might be ready to put in a little more work if you want it to look good. There are several ways to decorate a fence. You can either add decorative elements to the fence boards and panels or use a completely different method of fencing, as the picket fence. In some ways, picket fences offer much more flexibility than post and rail fences. By varying the height, thickness, and arrangement of the pickets, you can create interesting patterns and shapes.