Fence Company in Clemson, SC

We are a fence company in Clemson, SC, working the city and the Pickens and Anderson County ground around it. Clemson counted about 17,681 people at the 2020 census with the university included, and the median age here is 25. Of roughly 7,868 occupied housing units, about a third are owner occupied and about two thirds are rented. That ratio is the single biggest thing separating a Clemson fence job from one anywhere else we work.

Lake Hartwell borders the city on the west. The lake covers about 56,000 acres with 962 miles of shoreline and was built by the US Army Corps of Engineers, and the ground between many back yards and the water is federal land rather than private property. Add a campus of nearly 28,000 students and you get a fence market driven by durability and containment rather than curb appeal. We have been building in the Upstate since 2018, more than 55 fences so far.

What a landlord buys, and what an owner buys

Roughly two thirds of occupied homes in Clemson are rented, and a rental fence gets bought on a different basis. The owner is not going to look at it every day, will not stain it, and needs it to survive tenants who did not choose it and will not maintain it. Chain link and powder coated aluminum do that. A pine privacy fence that needs sealing every few years generally does not, because nobody is going to seal it.

The other half of the rental question is turnover. On a student lease cycle a fence gets inspected, repaired and handed over on a schedule, and small failures matter more than big ones. Gate hardware is the usual casualty, so we hang rental gates on heavier hinges with latches that do not need a gentle hand, and we size the gate post for the weight of the leaf rather than matching it to the line posts.

Owner occupied Clemson is a different customer entirely. In Patrick Square, the traditional neighborhood development off Issaqueena Trail, lots are tight, houses sit close to the street and the neighborhood was designed around a consistent look, so a low picket or an ornamental panel is what fits. In the older Calhoun area, named for what this town was called until residents voted to rename it Clemson in 1943, the housing is genuinely old and a fence has to suit a house that predates most of what surrounds it.

Lots that fall toward Lake Hartwell

West of town the ground runs downhill to the water, and two things follow. The first is slope. A fence on a falling lot is either stepped, panel by panel with the line dropping in stairs, or raked, with the rails following the grade. Stepped suits aluminum and vinyl because their panels are rigid. Raked suits wood built on site board by board. On a steep Clemson lot the difference is not cosmetic, because it decides how much gap sits under the fence at the downhill end, which matters a great deal if you have a dog.

The second is where your property actually stops. Lake Hartwell is a Corps of Engineers reservoir, and a strip of federally managed land runs between a great many lakeside lots and the waterline. That ground is not yours to fence. We locate the property line and build to it rather than running a fence down to the water, and if you are not sure where your line falls, we would much rather find that out at the quote than after the posts are set.

Drainage is the other lakeside issue. Water moving downhill toward the reservoir concentrates in swales and creek heads, and a solid privacy fence dropped across one becomes a dam. We either raise the bottom rail at the low point or step the fence over it.

962 miles of shorelineWrap Lake Hartwell's roughly 56,000 acres, and the Corps of Engineers land along it sets where a lakeside Clemson fence has to stop.

Clay, rain and a fence that has to last through tenants

The ground here is the same Cecil series red clay that runs through the rest of the Piedmont, mapped across more than 10 million acres of it. It holds its shape and does not shift much, but it drains slowly, and the Upstate takes about 48 inches of rain a year against a US average of 38 with no dry season. A post hole in Clemson clay holds water, and both wood and galvanized steel fail at grade, where the wet and the air meet.

On a rental property that failure point is the whole argument for spending a little more on the posts and a little less on the fabric. We set for wind load and saturated clay rather than for a frost line that is shallow here, use ground contact rated lumber because South Carolina sits in one of the heaviest termite pressure zones mapped in the residential code, and crown the concrete so water runs off. A fence that stands straight through ten tenant cycles was decided at the post hole, not at the panel.