Fence & Deck Repair in Palo Alto

• Front strip (between the street setback line and your lot line): 4 feet maximum. Support posts may rise to 5 feet, and an entry gate or trellis up to 8 feet is allowed if it stays within 3 feet deep and 5 feet wide.
• Front and street-side yards beyond the setback line: 6 feet.
• Interior side and rear yards: 7 feet — a foot more than most people expect, and a foot more than this page used to say.
• Backing onto a frontage road, railroad, industrial or commercial land: solid board up to 8 feet.
• At an intersection: nothing over 3 feet inside the triangle drawn 35 feet back from the corner along the curblines — and this is the one rule in the chapter that cannot be varied.
• Corner lots whose rear yards join: 6 feet is allowed on the street-side line starting 50 feet from the corner's radius point, with a 12-foot clear zone where a driveway meets the property line.

One rule that surprises even longtime owners: a fence running through a public utility easement needs an encroachment permit from Public Works — separate from the fence rules themselves, and easy to miss.

Replacing rotted posts, broken boards, or a failed gate on an existing legal fence is the simplest case in the city: no paperwork, no waiting. If your current fence already exceeds today's height limits, a repair generally preserves it, while a full rebuild has to meet current code — one more reason repair-first is usually the right call here. The full comparison across all three cities is on the fence rules and permits guide.

Most of the city's residential fences are redwood on irrigated lots. Irrigation is the killer: a sprinkler head soaking a post twice a day rots it at the soil line years ahead of schedule, while the boards above stay looking healthy. If your fence leans after a storm, the posts were already gone — the wind just announced it.

What that looks like from the hole up is on one fence here in Palo Alto: old footings broken out, new posts in fresh concrete, the original boards left in place.

Like-for-like deck repairs — replacing boards, fixing a loose railing, sistering a joist — don't normally trigger a permit. New construction is different: under the California Residential Code, a deck needs a building permit unless it's under 200 square feet, under 30 inches above grade, detached from the house, and not serving the required exit door.

Send photos of the damage through the form — post bases, the full run of the fence, any lean — and get a repair estimate range before anyone visits.