Advice on putting up a fence

[clumsychaos]

Hi all,

I'm planning on putting up a fence where the currently stands a brick wall.

I need some advice though.

The brick wall is coming down as it is unsafe, it moves a lot and one big push would see the half of the wall come down no problem. It's roughly 50ft long, and is 5ft at it's highest point down by the house, 4ft in the middle then steps down to 3ft at the end (this is the weakest point of the wall though none of it is particularly sound).

My main issue is that my garden is level with the neighbours where the wall is 3 ft high and level with the rear alleyway, then his garden drops down about a foot, with his soil level running upwards towards the wall, but still being a half a foot lower than our level. Our garden drops down by a foot much further down, where eventually the two gardens meet level again.

The issue is, for that 15 or so feet where his garden is half a foot lower than ours how will I prevent my garden falling in to his when the wall is removed and the fence put up? Would I be best advised to leave the wall in place at the level of our garden, leaving it as a retaining wall, and fitting the fence posts in channels cut down into the wall, or fix the posts directly on to the wall (though I am unsure the wall would be strong enough to fully support it/take the drilling down in to it for the bolts.

Would I be right in thinking I would also need to measure 2m up from the top level of the garden for the max height of the fence there, and 2m up from the lower end of the garden for the max height of the fence there separately.

Just to give you a heads up, the neighbour is more than happy for the work to happen as I have already discussed it with him as the wall is beyond repair and would need a full rebuild to be safe again. Fencing seemed like the most cost effective option, but maybe not the simplest upon reflection.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

thanks,

 

[r896neo]

2m is the max height but can be taken from your higher side i.e it is permitable for his side to be higher than 2m

A good solid fence with concrete posts and concrete gravel boards will be fine but perhaps less aesthetically pleasing than a wall.

Trying to bolt to the wall is a no go it wont last. If you want to leave the wall in place you will need to put posts down past the side of the wall into original ground but this may be tricky as you'll probably hit the wall footings and also someone will loose perhaps 6'' and it will mess up the boundary line.

 

[clumsychaos]

Let's say for arguments sake that we have a limited budget that means we can't afford concrete gravel boards and posts and we are using lap board panels and wooden posts to be set in postcrete, and this is a DIY job due to the limited budget and need to get the wall removed. What would you suggest we do in this case?

 

[r896neo]

In that case i would leave the wall in place to act as a retaining wall, assuming this bit of the wall is stable at that height.

You need to try and put the posts down a good 2 ft into the ground to make sure its independant of the wall as the increased wind load may pull over what remains of the wall.

I would put them on the low side but thats between you and neighbour.

You may need to use a 3m post if you go on the low side of the wall.

 

[clumsychaos]

Ok thank you for your advice. Luckily it only affects about 3 of the panels at most.

 

[WabbitPoo]

If you go for posts 3m in length, use 100mm not 75mm as they'llk be too whippy.