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I went with a full concrete footer on a vinyl fence job and people thought I was nuts
Honestly, I had a client in Grand Rapids who wanted a 6-foot vinyl privacy fence on a slope. Everyone around here says to just use driven posts with a spike, especially for vinyl, because it's faster and cheaper. The other option was digging and setting in gravel, which is the normal way. I pushed for a third option: a 12-inch wide, 36-inch deep concrete footer for every single post. The client agreed, but my crew thought I was wasting a whole extra day and like $400 in extra concrete. Tbh, we finished it last fall, and that fence hasn't moved a millimeter with all the freeze-thaw cycles we get. The posts are rock solid, no wiggle at all. Has anyone else ever gone that overboard on a vinyl install and been glad they did later?
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reese_perry62mo agoMost Upvoted
How much extra did that footing add to the total job cost for the client? I've thought about doing something similar for high-wind areas, but I worry about pricing myself out of the work. Your point about the freeze-thaw makes a lot of sense though.
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sagea882mo ago
My neighbor used railroad ties for a retaining wall and it looked great for about six months. Now it's all bowed out and leaning.
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simonw411mo ago
Are you really dealing with enough freeze-thaw cycles up in Grand Rapids to justify that kind of overkill? I mean, yeah, Michigan winters are no joke, but I've seen vinyl fences on driven posts hold up for five or six years without any noticeable lean. Pouring a full concrete footer for every post sounds like you were trying to win some kind of structural perfection contest nobody else entered. Did the ground actually shift that much on your other jobs, or was this more about having peace of mind for yourself? Because $400 extra and a whole day's labor seems like a lot to solve a problem that might not have been there in the first place.
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