Steel Fence Repair in Palmdale, CA

What we repair, and what we turn down

If a fence was welded when it was built, a weld can usually put it right. That covers picket and rail fencing in the wrought iron style, round pipe and ranch rail, steel panels, and the steel posts holding all of them up. Chain link is woven wire stretched over a pipe frame, so fixing it means fabric, ties and a stretcher rather than a welder, and wood and vinyl do not weld at all. On a Palmdale home lot chain link is mostly off the table anyway: Palmdale Municipal Code 17.86.040 prohibits it in residential and mixed-use zones unless it is temporary fencing.

Rust along the bottom

Steel fences rust from the ground up. Sprinkler spray, rain and soil piled against the bottom rail keep the lowest few inches damp long after the rest has dried, so the damage shows as a band along the bottom with good steel above it.

Push a screwdriver into the picket bottoms and the base of each post. Thinned steel that resists the tool still takes a weld. Where the tool goes through, there is nothing left to weld to, so that length is cut back to sound metal and new steel is spliced in. Fix the water as well. Turn the sprinkler head away, pull the soil off the rail, and the new steel will not sit wet the way the old steel did.

Posts that lean

A post leans because its footing has turned in the ground. Wind pushes on the panel, the panel levers the post, and only the concrete below grade pushes back. Pushing the post upright and packing the hole lasts until the next strong wind from the same direction.

A post that has moved needs its footing redone. Any replacement post we fabricate is cut long enough to sit at least 36 inches below ground, our shop practice rather than a code number. An open picket fence helps here, because most of a gust passes between the pickets instead of loading the posts.

Sections hit by a vehicle

Impact damage comes in two kinds. A section bowed out over a few feet can be pulled or heated back straight without losing much strength. A crease, a flat spot or a sharp kink means the tube wall has folded, and folded steel stays weak, so that piece is cut out and replaced. The hit also travels through the rails into the posts on each side, so those footings get checked before anyone judges the panel.

Matching what is already there

An older fence may not match anything on a rack, so we measure the pickets, rails and post walls you have, then build the replacement section in our Lancaster shop to those sizes and weld it in between two sound posts. Where a close match is not possible, we replace the whole panel between two posts, which reads as a deliberate change rather than a patch.

Each weld burns the coating off for a few inches around the joint, and a fence standing in the ground cannot go back into a galvanizing kettle. The weld zones are ground to bright steel, coated with a zinc rich compound and topcoated. New coating beside old coating will read a shade different in daylight.

Repair or replace under 17.86.040

Palmdale's fence section speaks to both sides of this job. Paragraph E of Palmdale Municipal Code 17.86.040 wants fences and walls continuously maintained, with no sign of rust or disrepair, so a rusting run is a code matter as well as an eyesore. A patched run stays the fence that was already there. A replaced run is a new fence and has to meet today's rules for the lot.

Those rules are strict about material. The same section prohibits fencing made of solid metal, so a solid steel run that comes down cannot go back up as solid steel. The new run would be open steel in the wrought iron style, which is what we build. Height follows the setback: 6 feet in the street side, interior side and rear setbacks, with a seventh foot only where the part above 6 feet is open view, and lower limits in the front setback. The code sets no length at which a repair turns into a replacement, so if a long stretch is down, ask Palmdale Planning which side of that line your job falls on before steel is cut. For new runs, see steel fences in Palmdale.

When the fence is a pool barrier

If the fence is a pool's safety enclosure, the repair has to leave it one. California Health and Safety Code 115923 holds a pool barrier to at least 60 inches tall, no more than 2 inches of clearance underneath, no gap that passes a 4 inch sphere, and an outside face with nothing a small child could use to climb. A wide rail welded low on the outside as a quick fix can become a foothold.

What to send

Photos down the fence line from each end, close shots of what has failed, and the length of the damaged stretch. Say whether a pool sits inside the fence. A broken gate in the same run is covered on our gate repair in Palmdale page, and more on fence repair methods is on our steel fence repair page.