Fence & Deck Repair in Mountain View

• Front yard (the first 20 feet from the front property line): 3 feet maximum — the strictest front-yard limit among neighboring cities.
• Side and rear yards: 6 feet. A 7-foot fence is possible, but only with Planning and Building permits and written consent from the adjacent neighbors.
• Wood fences up to 6 feet on single-family lots need no permit. Any non-wood fence, and any retaining wall, does. Townhomes, condos, and anything with an HOA always need a planning permit — and the HOA's own rules on top.
• Fences must sit at least 1 foot back from a public sidewalk. On corner lots, nothing over 3 feet within the first 10 feet where a driveway runs along a neighbor's rear yard.

For a single-family home with a wood fence, repair is as simple as it gets: replace the rotted posts and broken boards, no paperwork. The code's no-bracing rule actually describes the right repair — the problem is almost always the posts, and a brace just delays the same work at a higher price, because a leaning fence stresses the boards and rails it's still attached to.

Mountain View's own exemption list confirms the statewide rule: a deck needs no building permit if it's under 200 square feet, under 30 inches above grade, detached from the house, and doesn't serve the required exit door. Repairs to an existing deck — board replacement, railing repair, fixing a soft spot — are the like-for-like case and don't normally trigger a permit. Structural changes or expansion do.

Same story as everywhere on the Peninsula: irrigated lawns rot posts at the soil line while everything above looks fine. Mountain View's smaller lots add one twist — fences often carry gates, trellises, and neighbor-shared runs, so one failed post can pull several structures out of true at once.

Send photos through the form — post bases, the lean, the gate that stopped latching — and get a repair estimate range before anyone visits.