Fence & Deck Repair in Atherton

• Zoning clearance required for all fences, gates, and posts, except interior property-line fences ≤6 feet set ≥10 feet back from the right-of-way, and temporary construction fencing.
• Within 10 feet of the right-of-way: building permit required, height capped at 6 feet (on certain listed streets, measured as 6 feet above natural grade or 8 feet above the road centerline).
• Fences between 6 and 8 feet must be screened by plantings — installed at construction, reaching maturity within 3 years, with irrigation. This is Atherton's signature rule: the town allows tall fences but requires that they eventually disappear behind greenery.
• Entry gates and posts: 10 feet maximum including light fixtures (fixtures ≤18 inches), and no more than two lights to an entrance.
• Corner visibility triangles: 30 feet, nothing over 3 feet.
• Retaining walls over 6 feet — or within 20 feet of another retaining wall — need a special structure permit.

Which of those applies to a given run, where the ten-foot band along the street starts, and why the corner triangle is described two different ways by the town's own documents are set out on fence rules and permits in Atherton.

Atherton's entry gates are the heaviest on the Peninsula — long leaves, light fixtures on the posts, often an operator hanging off them — and a hinge post carrying that load wears out faster than any post in a fence line. Two jobs come out of it, and they are worth telling apart. A gate that drags, sticks or won't latch is usually the post rather than the leaf, and re-hanging it in place leaves height, material and position exactly where the town cleared them. A gate that is genuinely past saving goes back into the opening that already exists, on a post sized for a gate rather than for a panel.

The town's own figures bound both: entry gates and posts are capped at 10 feet including light fixtures, the fixtures themselves at 18 inches, and no more than two lights to an entrance. A gate that goes back inside those numbers, in the same opening, is a gate inside what was already cleared.

Repairing an existing, legally established fence — posts, boards, gate hardware, like-for-like — is the path of least resistance in Atherton, because it doesn't reopen the clearance process. Estate fencing here also fails differently: long runs, mature irrigation systems, and heavy planting against the fence line mean rot at the soil line and vegetation load are the usual culprits, and gates — large, heavy, often automated — wear their hinge posts faster than anywhere else on the Peninsula.

Send photos through the form — the failed section, post bases, the gate and its hinge side — and get a repair estimate range before anyone comes out.