Fence & Deck Repair in Menlo Park

• Side and rear yards: 7 feet maximum.
• Front setback area: 4 feet maximum.
• Corner triangle: 3 feet, inside a triangle measured 35 feet back from the intersection along both right-of-way lines.
• Wood fences not over 7 feet are exempt from a building permit. Anything taller than the height limits requires a use permit under Chapter 16.82; properties fronting Santa Cruz Avenue have their own exception procedure (§16.64.030).
• Height is measured from finished grade — and where the ground differs on the two sides of the fence, from the lower of the two.

The city's own guidance warns about this directly: in much of Menlo Park, the public right-of-way extends past the curb and sidewalk into what looks like your front landscaping. The curb is not your property line, and — the city is explicit on this — your neighbors' fences are not a reliable guide either, because plenty of them are in the wrong place. The city's guidance describes measuring from the street's gutter-to-gutter width against the recorded right-of-way to locate the true line. If you're rebuilding a front or corner fence rather than repairing it in place, this is worth an hour of checking before any posts go in.

Repairing an existing fence — posts, boards, gate hardware — in its existing location is straightforward and doesn't reopen the property-line question. That's a real advantage of repair over replacement here: an old fence in a slightly wrong spot is usually a legal nonconforming structure, but rebuild it from scratch and it has to be right. The permit logic across all three cities is laid out in the fence rules and permits guide.

The failure pattern is the same across the Peninsula's irrigated lots: posts rot in the few inches around the soil line, where moisture and oxygen meet. Above ground the wood dries; below, there's too little oxygen for rot to thrive. That's why a fence can look solid and still lean after one storm. Decks fail differently — the most common serious problem is joist rot where the deck meets the house, a spot you can't see without looking underneath.

Send photos through the form — the base of the posts, the full fence line, underside of the deck if you can reach it — and get a repair estimate range before anyone drives out.