Advice on building fence in front of old wall.

[hvendlor]

We have a 2m high old tatty boundary wall running down the length of the garden, it's structurally sound but extremely tatty, various ages and sizes of bricks, half rendered, half not. It belong to the neighbours who refuse to do anything with it on our side, so only option we have is to build a fence in front of it.

I've only ever erected fences that are concrete+fence panel but here I wanted to do a full timber fence with rails and pales. My plan was to use pales with a small gap between each one(like decking) so that air can circulate in the void between the fence and wall but gaps are small enough so that you can't see through.

My posts will be 2m high, question is, how far apart should the posts be(6ft)? and how many rails do you use?

 

[Steve]

Since you are not using panels the posts can be as far apart as you want, or as close as you want, within reason. When I built my fence, which sounds similar to yours but I used featheredge boards, I just spaced the posts evenly along the length, finished up at approx 5ft apart. It looks very sturdy and is very strong, as they are 4x4's set in concrete.

 

[fencer35]

can you fix rails / battens directly to the wall and clad them?
saves digging , concrete and posts.

modern fixings like thunder bolts, resin fix etc will hold pretty much anything

good luck !