Vinyl Fence Installation in Mauldin, SC

Nearly every vinyl fence installation in Mauldin starts with a demolition. The subdivisions here filled in when I-385 went through, the first fences went up with the houses, and a pine privacy fence built in 1988 has now taken close to forty winters.

Mauldin had 24,724 residents at the 2020 census and a median age of 39.2, which fits the housing: settled streets, grown trees, and owners who have already paid to fix a wood fence at least once. Vinyl answers that, as long as the panel you buy is a heavy one. We measure on your property, free, and take no deposit.

Why the second fence on a Mauldin lot is usually vinyl

The first fence on these streets was pressure treated pine and it did its job. What ends it is the few inches of post at ground contact and a cycle of soaking and drying that never gets a break here. By the time we get the call, the gate has dropped, two or three posts move when you push on them, and the boards have cupped far enough to open gaps.

Vinyl closes that out. It does not absorb water and there is nothing in it for a termite to eat, which counts for something in a state that sits in one of the heaviest termite pressure zones mapped in the residential code. What it asks in return is wall thickness. A thin extrusion and a heavy one photograph identically and behave nothing alike once the wind gets under a six foot panel.

Height is worth deciding again rather than copying. Plenty of the original fences on these streets were built at four feet because that is what the neighborhood did in 1975. If the reason you are replacing it is a dog or a pool, going to six foot vinyl is the same day of work.

Old footings out, new post centers in

Vinyl panels arrive finished and at a set length, so the posts have to land where the manufacturer says they land. That one fact is why replacing a wood fence with vinyl is never a matter of dropping new posts into the old holes. A 1975 wood fence was spaced to suit the crew and the lumber that week, and the concrete under it is still down there.

The old footings come out of the ground rather than being snapped off at grade and left to fight with the new line. Cecil clay does us one favor here: a forty year old footing usually lifts whole. What it leaves behind is a crater of loose spoil in exactly the wrong spot, and a post set in loose spoil is a post set in nothing. Either the center moves or the hole gets backfilled and compacted before we go again.

Growth is the other change. A tree that was a sapling when Knollwood went in off Brooks Road in the 1970s is structural now, and it is often structural directly under the old fence line. Those roots get found and the panel layout gets worked around them before any material is ordered.

No committee, so the color is genuinely your call

Mauldin is the counter-intuitive one in the Golden Strip. Most of the older neighborhoods here, Knollwood and Forrester Woods among them, were laid out before covenants became standard practice, so there is frequently no architectural committee reviewing height, material or color at all. Down I-385 that review is the first thing we talk about. Here it often does not exist.

That puts the color decision back on the house instead of on a document. White is the base and it reads bright and brand new, which is what some owners want against a 1970s brick ranch and precisely what others do not. Tan, khaki and gray settle down against dark brick and mature shade. Whatever you land on, a good compound holds it, because the UV package inside the extrusion does the job that stain does on a wood fence.

Check your deed before you assume, though. A handful of Mauldin streets do carry recorded covenants, and a restriction on paper outlives whoever wrote it.

What a vinyl fencing job in Mauldin includes

Every Mauldin vinyl quote is written for a yard that already has a fence standing in it.

• A measure taken to panel length, so new post centers come from the material rather than the old holes
• Tear out of the existing fence, with the original concrete footings dug out and hauled off
• Utility locate request placed before the first hole is opened
• Heavy wall posts and rails, with the rails routed through the posts instead of bracketed to the face
• A root check along the old line, since forty years of growth changes where a post can go
• Color options past white, including tan, khaki and gray for darker brick
• Gate posts upsized and set deeper, with an aluminum stiffener inside the gate frame
• Caps glued rather than pressed on, and a walk of the finished line with you before we leave

The full breakdown of materials, process and pricing factors lives on our vinyl fence installation page. This page covers what changes in Mauldin.