Steel Fences

Open picket is the look most buyers know as wrought iron, though today it is square steel tube welded between rails. It marks a boundary and keeps the view. A solid privacy fence closes the face with steel sheet or plate welded to a steel frame. A slat fence carries steel slats in a frame, with the gap between slats chosen in the design. All three are welded steel on steel posts, built to the length and height of one run.

Which face you pick decides how hard the wind works the fence. Wind loads the panel, the panel hands that load to its posts, and every post resists it like a vertical cantilever anchored in its footing. Pickets let most of the air slip through, so a picket post sees only part of the push. A closed face stops all of it. So a solid run needs heavier posts, spaced closer, in deeper footings than a picket run of equal height, and a slat panel sits between the two, loading its posts harder the tighter its slats.

For footings, our recommendation is 36 inches of post below ground as the minimum, with more depth under a solid panel. The figure comes from our own shop practice. It is not in any code or published standard.

Who governs the lot sets the height, and the answer can change within a short drive. City zoning codes cover land inside city limits. County codes cover the rest, and parts of the Antelope Valley sit under a community standards district that adds its own rules. Lancaster Municipal Code 17.08.130 allows 4 feet in the front yard setback and 6 feet in the side and rear setbacks. LA County Code 22.110.070 caps a required front yard at 3 feet 6 inches and interior side and rear yards at 6 feet on unincorporated land. In Kern County, 19.08.210 allows 4 feet in front within the residential districts it lists.

Some codes rule on the face itself, not only the height. Palmdale Municipal Code 17.86.040 prohibits solid metal fencing, so a steel fence there is open. The Acton community standards district wants at least 70 percent of a perimeter fence to be non-view-obscuring, and the Leona Valley district prohibits solid perimeter fences other than retaining walls. Before choosing solid or open, read the rules for your area: Lancaster, Palmdale, Quartz Hill, Rosamond, Littlerock, Acton, Lake Los Angeles and Leona Valley.

On sloped ground the method of measuring matters. LA County takes height at the highest average ground level within 3 feet of either side of the fence, and Lancaster takes it from finished grade at the base up to the top of the fence material. A picket run can be raked, tilted to follow the fall of the ground. A solid run cannot tilt without leaving a triangular gap under each panel, so it is stepped in level sections, and the height gets measured again at every step.

Around a pool, the fence is often the pool's safety enclosure, and California Health and Safety Code 115923 sets the dimensions of one. It must reach at least 60 inches, keep bottom clearance to 2 inches or less, and leave no opening a 4 inch sphere can pass through. Its outside face cannot offer a small child a handhold or foothold, so a low horizontal rail or a decorative scroll at climbing height works against it. The access gate swings away from the pool and is self closing and self latching, with the latch at least 60 inches above the ground.

On our standard picket panel, 3/4 inch pickets sit about 4 inches on center and leave a clear gap near 3.25 inches, narrower than the sphere. So a pool leaves the picket spacing alone and changes the height, the bottom clearance, the rail positions and the gate. On sloped ground a pool barrier is raked, not stepped, because the gap under a step can exceed the 2 inch limit. Separately, Health and Safety Code 115922 requires two or more of seven listed drowning prevention features when a permit is issued for a new or remodeled pool at a single family home, and the enclosure is one of them. Since 60 inches is taller than every front yard limit above, a barrier usually follows the side and rear lines.

Steel outdoors needs its finish in layers. Under ASTM A123, hot dip galvanizing has to carry a minimum average of 45 to 75 microns of zinc on common fence tube, the amount set by wall thickness. Topcoat that zinc with powder and the result is a duplex system, which the American Galvanizers Association rates at 1.5 to 2.3 times the combined life of the two coatings used alone. Prep under ASTM D7803 keeps the zinc from outgassing pinholes into the powder, and for the color coat AAMA 2604, the high performance coating specification, sits a tier above 2603, the basic pigmented one. Corrosion begins where coating is thinnest, along cut ends and weld seams, so those edges are dressed before anything is coated.

After measuring the run on site, we fabricate every panel, post and gate in our shop and deliver them. To plan a run, bring its length, the height you want, where each gate goes and its width, pictures showing how the ground falls, and whether a pool is inside the line. For damage to a fence already standing, see steel fence repair, and for the openings in a run, custom steel gates.