Wood Fence Options

Adding a wood fence to your landscaping scheme can transform your outdoor living space and enhance the style of your home. A redwood fence creates a pleasing backdrop to a garden, or an awkward hillside lot can be transformed with the addition of a deck and a privacy fence.

Consider the following to find materials that suit your style and budget:

Cedar and Redwood Fences

Redwood fences can be expensive in higher grades, but it makes an outstanding fence material. If this type of wood is not available in your area, it usually can be special ordered.

To protect your investment, select a heartwood; sapwood is prone to rot quickly, and heartwood is less likely to succumb to disease and insects.

Construction heart, construction common, merchantable heart or merchantable grades are most optimum for fencing. Merchantable heart, construction heart select heart, or clear all heart should be used for posts and any other part of the fence that touches ground.

Untreated Spruce Fences

Untreated spruce picket fences and cross rails are most commonly used in prefabricated 4x8- or 8x6-foot picket and stockade-fence sections that you find at your local hardware store. These are then installed between pressure-treated fence posts.

As with pressure-treated wood, treating spruce with a water repellant or water repellant stain is essential to prolonging a fence's lifespan. If left exposed, deterioration will begin to occur within three to four years, but if treated, your fence should double its lifespan or better, depending on the climate.

Pressure-Treated Pine Fences

The economy wood of choice for fences is pressure-treated Southern yellow pine.

Coat pressure-treated lumber with a water repellant stain to avoid warping and checking, but never use a latex paint.

Unless the wood is kiln-dried after being pressure-treated, you'll need to wait several weeks before applying a water repellent. You can test the wood by sprinkling water on it. If the wood absorbs water quickly, it's ready to be sealed. If the wood doesn't absorb water, let it dry for several weeks before sealing.

Pressure-treated wood may not be the best looking of the wood fencing options, but it is more resistant to rot and insects than any of the others. For fences that will come in contact with the ground, use ground-contact-rated, pressure-treated wood (0.40 as instead of 0.29 lbs./cu. ft. chemical retention).