Fence Post Replacement in Palo Alto

Pull the old footing with the post, set the new post on gravel so irrigation water drains through instead of pooling under the end grain, and crown the concrete above grade. On lots where the sprinkler layout can't be changed, a steel post carrying the original wood panels removes the target entirely — the most durable repair for Palo Alto's watering habits.

A fence on an irrigated Palo Alto lot came in carrying two kinds of damage at once. Fire had scorched the boards along one run, and underneath them the posts had gone soft at the soil line. Those two facts point in opposite directions, and choosing between them is the whole decision: char on a board is surface damage to a part that carries nothing, while a post that has lost its section at ground level is the only part of a fence that carries anything at all.

The test is one anyone can run before calling anybody. Push the fence at the top. On this one the panels held and the posts pivoted — which settles it. The structure had failed. The cladding had not.

Each dead post came up with its original concrete footing still attached to it, and that footing had to be broken out with a jackhammer before anything new could go back in. This is the part of the job a homeowner never sees quoted and the part that absorbs the effort: a footing poured decades ago does not lift out, and leaving it where it is means the new post sits shallow, off the line, or both.

New posts went into fresh concrete in the same holes, on the same line, carrying the same boards. One of them sits at the gate, where the load is worst and the sag shows first.

Look at the finished photographs above and the scorching is still on the boards. That is not an unfinished job. That is the job.

Replacing the boards would have meant paying to strip out material that still performs its only task — standing in a line and blocking a view. What holds the fence up is the posts, and those were replaced outright. The owner ends up with the fence they already had, standing on new structure, for a fraction of what a new run of the same length would have come to. If the char ever starts to bother them, boards can be swapped later onto a fence that no longer moves.

That is the repair-first argument in a single object: renew what carries the load, keep what doesn't.

Push the fence at the top: every post that pivots at the ground is done. Photograph those bases and send them through the form for a count and a range. If you are not yet sure whether the posts are the problem, start from fence repair in Palo Alto.