Fence Maintenance Tips for New Homeowners

Buying a new home is always exciting as it’s a great achievement for many people in making their dreams come true. A fence helps make it safe and adds value to your home as well. When you want to increase the security of your home, a fence is one of the first things many new homeowners have installed. The fence plays a crucial role in ensuring that your home is secure and protected against intruders and keeping your house private from prying eyes. However, installing a fence for a new house alone is the first step; the fence must be well maintained over the years to get the greatest value out of your investment in your property.

Taking Care of a Fence

Regularly taking care of your fence is crucial to make it last a long time before repairs or replacement is needed. For instance, maintaining your new fence well can add more than ten years of quality fence life before replacing it. On the other hand, if you neglect to maintain your wooden fence, it may become susceptible to weaknesses like persistent bad weather, or pests such as termites.

Fence Weaknesses

Different fence materials have different weaknesses, like a metal fence won’t be susceptible to termites but may possibly be weak to rust. These weaknesses will make the fence wear out faster than normal without regular maintenance. It may take time before you identify any problem with your fence even without any maintenance since at the time of installation it’s equipped to be resistant to the respective fence type weakness. Though some of these problems may not be physically visible. Therefore, you should pre-empt the issues rather than deal with them after they’ve already happened. However, practicing these new fence tips will keep you on track to taking care of any danger that can cause damage to your fence.

For this reason, inspecting your fence for damage at regular intervals before any damage gets out of control will help control the source of damage. In this article, we’ve highlighted a few new homeowner fence tips that will help you improve the working life of your fence.

Keeping your fence clean

Cleaning your fence regularly helps you remove built up dirt, mildew growth, and grime from the fence. In addition, it will also make your fence look new and attractive. You can use soap and water but a fence cleaning solution helps clean your fence more thoroughly. Water and liquid soap is the classic combo and works wonders as well. Start by washing from the base and moving towards the top of the fence. This fence maintenance tip is important for both wooden and metal fences. The most basic fence maintenance will also help you identify any weakness or thin hair cracks in your fence that can be the start of longer term damage.

Furthermore, it will also help you remove unwanted debris from the fence. This fence maintenance step is the cheapest way of caring for your fence to make it last longer. With a painted fence you should take care while washing to preserve the top paint coat.

Painting your fence

This is another part of fence maintenance that will save you from high replacement costs of your fence down the road. Painting adds a protective coat to your fence from the outside hazards like moisture and temperature. This coat blocks direct rays from the sun, which can cause damage to the wood over long periods of time. The painted layer is also waterproof, preventing water entry into the wood. Along with the added durability, of course fence painting will also make your fence new and attractive. In addition, painting also prevents premature rot in wooden fences. It will also free your fence from mildew that can lead to damage. Therefore, painting your fence is a good way to have a protective layer warding off the elements. Every five years it’s good to get your fence re-painted to maintain the effectiveness of the paint.

Controlling Termite Infestations in Your Fence

Termites can easily damage your fence once they invade the wood boards. Damage caused by these insects are more common in wood fences made from trees such as cedar, pine, redwood, and fir. To prevent these fence pests from invading your yard, insecticides are the first option. This practice can be done as a preventative measure if you’re at risk of termite infestation in your wood fence, like if your area is known for having termites. However, when your region is less vulnerable to attack by these insects, panting can be a sufficient defense against termites.

Protect your fence free from excessive moisture

This fence tip will stop rot from happening in a wood fence. Wood is always prone to rotting when moisture can penetrate through to the subsurface. Moisture can also cause rust in metal fences if not properly treated and protected. You can keep your fence free from extra moisture by adjusting sprinklers to miss your fence or only briefly splash them with water. You can also cut down shrubs and trees that may touch your, which can hold water for long periods of time. This will free your fence from extra constant moisture hence keeping it from degrading more quickly.

Rot Boards for Wood Fences

Adding something called a “rot board” to the bottom of a fence helps fill the gaps between the bottom of the fence and the ground. These extra boards will prevent moisture from the ground from getting into and rotting the other boards of your fence, and can make for fence look a bit more polished. These boards also need to be maintained and replaced, so check the rot boards to see if they have well…rotted. They will be the first to accumulate excess moisture, and possibly mold or algae so if they do so just replace them to keep the rest of your fence protected.

Check Your Fence Periodically

In order to detect developing problems or weaknesses in your fence, a quick fence check will do the trick. A regular check of your fence also updates you on the present conditions of the fence for easy maintenance, and planning on when the next cycle of washing, re-painting, re-sealing, or replacing rot boards is due. This keeps you on track for any looming vulnerabilities that may soon damage your fence. Therefore, you will have full control of your fence, which is important in improving the fence’s lifetime durability and effectiveness. A basic maintenance check that everyone with a new fence should always practice is a simple inspection of the fence boards, rails, and base. Make sure all these parts look good, don’t have any cracks, discoloration or chipping, and your fence will be good to go.

Final Thoughts on New Homeowner Fence Maintenance

As a new home buyer, consider these fence maintenance tips that will help give you a longer working life for your new fence. Practicing these tips with persistence saves money in future fence repairs, or possible replacement due to things like a heavy termite infestation. A fence that is well maintained always provides better protection to your home. This also helps keep your privacy and your fence will stay looking fresh and beautiful. So if you’re a homeowner, be sure to keep up with fence maintenance to get the most value out of your new fence.