Steel Fences in Palmdale, CA

Why a Palmdale steel fence is always open

Palmdale Municipal Code 17.86.040 settles the material question before the design starts. Its list of accepted fencing materials includes wrought iron and masonry. Its list of prohibited ones includes solid metal, along with natural wood, plywood, tires and garage doors. A run of flat steel panels is solid metal however it is coated, so we do not build one inside Palmdale. What we build is picket and bar steel in the wrought iron style, welded into panels that stay open from the bottom rail to the top.

On our standard panel the pickets are 3/4 inch square tube at about 4 inches on center, leaving a clear gap near 3.25 inches. The code does not define open view in numbers, so show Palmdale Planning any design with heavy scrollwork or tight infill before steel is ordered.

Height, line by line

Each side of a lot has its own limit. Along the street side, interior side and rear setbacks of a home lot, a fence may be 6 feet, and one more foot is allowed, to 7 feet, only where the part above 6 feet is open view. A picket fence is open all the way up, so a side or rear run can use that seventh foot. Past 6 feet a new fence needs a building permit.

The front setback is tighter. Anything sight-obscuring stops at 3 feet there, and open view fencing may be allowed up to 5 feet, or 6 feet on a residential lot of 20,000 square feet or more. A picket run along the front of the lot is drawn to those figures, and your lot area from the parcel record tells us which one applies.

On commercial and office lots, where open view fencing is required for security and faces a public right-of-way, the code asks for decorative fencing such as tubular steel or wrought iron. Industrial land allows 8 feet in the other required setbacks, and up to 12 feet may be approved through a minor site plan review.

Privacy with masonry and steel

Steel cannot give you a solid screen in Palmdale, but masonry can, and the code names it as an accepted material. Plain precision block is not allowed. Block has to be finished with stucco, or given varied texture or color such as split-faced block, and topped with a decorative cap. A common pairing behind the front setback is a 6 foot block wall with a foot of open picket steel above it, which reaches the 7 foot limit because that top foot is open view. A mason builds the wall, and we build the steel to the wall's real length. In the front setback, a solid base is held to 3 feet, so ask Planning how it reads a base with pickets above before we draw one.

Pool fences

Palmdale's code sends pool enclosures to the building code requirements. California Health and Safety Code 115923 sets the barrier itself: at least 60 inches tall, no more than 2 inches of clearance underneath, no opening that passes a 4 inch sphere, and an outside face with nothing a small child could grab or step on to climb. A 3.25 inch picket gap already stops the sphere, so a pool fence changes the height, the bottom clearance, the rail positions and the gate rather than the picket spacing. The rails go on the pool side, and on a slope the panels rake with the ground so no gap opens under a step.

The access gate opens away from the pool, closes and latches by itself, with the latch at least 60 inches above the ground. Health and Safety Code 115922 also calls for at least two of seven drowning prevention features when a new pool or a remodel at a single family home gets a building permit, and the fence can be one of them.

Watch the front setback. Open view fencing there may reach 5 feet on a lot under 20,000 square feet, and 5 feet is exactly the 60 inch barrier minimum, so a barrier line inside that setback has no room to spare. Behind the setback there is more headroom.

What we do not build

No chain link, wood or vinyl, anywhere. In Palmdale chain link is prohibited in residential and mixed-use zones except as temporary fencing, and barbed wire, razor wire and electrified fencing are prohibited outside the exceptions the code lists.

Posts, wind and finish

An open picket panel lets most of a gust pass between the pickets, so its posts carry far less load than they would behind a solid face. Our recommendation is still at least 36 inches of post below ground, deeper under a gate. That figure is shop practice, not a code number. For the finish, ask for hot dip galvanizing under an AAMA 2604 class powder. Palmdale expects fences kept with no sign of rust or disrepair.

What to bring to the measure

The length of each run, the height you want on each line, your lot area, where the front setback line falls, where each gate goes and how wide, whether a pool sits inside the fence, and photos that show how the ground falls. Gates for the run are covered on custom steel gates in Palmdale, damage to an existing fence on steel fence repair in Palmdale, and build details on our steel fences page.