Fence Post Replacement

Push the fence sideways at the top. A sound post barely moves; a failed one pivots at the ground like a hinge. Other signs: the post looks intact but sounds hollow when knocked near the base, soil around it stays wet long after watering, or the fence leans more after every storm. A post that's soft enough to press a screwdriver into at grade is done — no treatment recovers it.

A diagonal brace propping up a leaning section doesn't fix anything — it transfers the load to boards and rails that were never meant to carry it, and the lean comes back worse. The brace costs almost as much effort as doing it right, and buys months instead of years.

• Pull the old post with its footing — leaving a rotted stub and old concrete in the ground forces the new post into a compromised hole.
• Set the new post on several inches of gravel so water drains through instead of sitting under the end grain.
• Pour concrete crowned above grade, sloping away from the wood — not flat, and never dished. A flat or sunken collar is a bathtub, and it's how the original post died.
• Re-treat any field cuts. Modern pressure-treated lumber (post-2004, copper-based) protects only the outer layer — every cut exposes untreated core.

Redwood looks right and resists decay, but its sapwood rots like anything else. Pressure-treated posts rated for ground contact last longer at grade. The most durable repair on an irrigated lot is a steel post with wood panels — the metal takes the ground contact, the wood keeps the look, and the sprinklers lose their favorite target.

A fence post is pushed straight down and braced by the panels either side of it. A hinge post has a gate hanging off one side, levered every time somebody walks through, which is why it is usually the first post in the run to go and why replacing it is worth doing to a higher specification than its neighbours. Where the post is coming out and the gate is the same age, the two jobs are one: gate installation.

Fence post replacement by town: Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Mountain View, plus the surrounding Peninsula towns on the service-area list.

The Palo Alto page carries a worked example — one fence where the posts had failed and nothing above them had.

Photograph the base of each suspect post and the fence line showing the lean. We'll tell you from the photos how many posts are actually gone — it's usually fewer than it looks.