Wood Fencing in Martinsville, IN

Wood privacy fencing gets asked for in Martinsville for the usual reasons, a dog that needs a yard, kids, a screen from the road, but the town’s setting changes how we build it. Lower lots closer to the river tend to be flat, slow to drain, and saturated for days after a heavy rain, while properties a few miles out climb into wooded, rolling ground toward Morgan-Monroe State Forest. The same 6-foot cedar or pressure-treated fence has to be detailed differently for each. A fence designed for dry, sloped ground and then set in a wet yard is usually the one that starts leaning and rotting at the base years ahead of schedule.

The weak point of any wood fence is the few inches of post right at grade, where the wood stays damp and air keeps feeding rot. On wet ground we specify posts treated for heavy-duty ground contact, the UC4B rating rather than the general UC4A ground-contact rating, and set them on a few inches of crushed stone at the bottom of the hole so water drains away instead of pooling against the end grain. The concrete is finished above grade and crowned so rain runs off the post instead of collecting around it. We also run a pressure-treated rot board along the bottom and hold the pickets a couple of inches off the soil, so the boards that are hardest to replace never sit in mud.

Before we quote a Martinsville job, we look the parcel up on FEMA’s flood maps. A solid privacy fence inside a mapped flood zone can catch debris and hold back moving water, and some of those lots are better served by a shadowbox style with open gaps that let water through. Where a permit or floodplain approval may apply, we tell you before the design is settled, not after the posts are in. We also ask where water stands after a hard rain, because a low corner of the yard changes post spacing and where a gate should swing. You get an itemized quote with posts, boards, hardware, concrete, and labor each on their own line, and most jobs start within 1-3 weeks of approval.