Fence Fix

When we moved into our house, the vinyl fence in the backyard was already leaning into the neighbor’s yard. I ignored it for a few years, but then we had a wind storm in March that made it even worse and broke a few of the brackets that were holding some of the posts and panels together, so I decided that I would remove and reinstall three of the posts and three of the panels over Easter weekend since it was a four-day weekend for me and the weather was really nice.

I don’t think the fence was installed correctly. Some of the brackets broke because the panels were sitting on the edges of the brackets (rather than fitting snugly in them), leaving some of the brackets exposed, so of course they snapped in a violent wind storm. This means that the distance between the two posts in some instances was over-measured. Also, when I removed the existing fence posts, I realized that the holes weren’t dug deeply enough, and it seems like they didn’t put any gravel underneath the posts to facilitate drainage. With no gravel, water was probably sitting at the base of the posts and during the winter, when it would freeze and thaw and freeze and thaw, likely dislodged the posts, weakened the base and led to them leaning more and more over time.

First, obviously, you have to remove the panels (the walls