Following on from last week's general garden maintenance article, it's now time for me, Mark Stradling from Mark's Garden Services to talk about the best way to look after your fence.
This may be a sore subject to sufferers in the recent gales but it need not be.
Take a good look at your fence right now; you paid how much to have it installed? Well, a sore point or not, your fence will need a little TLC at this time of year. You probably only had it installed last year and think it’s going to last forever? Wrong! Any fence young or old will need at least one coat of preservative paint right now and another in October. Cost £25 to £40 for the preservative. Cost of replacing your fence?
It is also a very good therapeutic exercise, gives you plenty of time to reflect and gets those celebratory cobwebs off.
Take a very good look at your fence, inspecting all fixings, posts from top to bottom, gravel boards and then the panel itself. Apart from a good paint does it need anything else done to it? You should be looking for the following trouble spots - weak and wobbly posts, fences that can sway and wobble in the slightest of winds have potential to end up on the floor with snapped posts which in turn will break the panels too.
Broken panels can be repaired before the need to have the whole panel replaced. Fence panels mainly rot from the bottom upwards due to there not being a gravel board installed to keep the fence panel from directly touching the wet ground. Wooden gravel boards will rot too but at a much slower rate than a fence panel. A fence without gravel boards of either wood or concrete is a waste of time and money. Gravel boards cost less than a fence panel. At least 5 times less with wood and at least 3 times with concrete!
Does it sound like too much hard work, especially in the cold weather? Why not ask me, Mark Stradling from Mark’s Garden Services to give your fence that much-needed tender loving care instead?
