Central Texas recently suffered from a day of VERY strong wind gusts...well, not like hurricane or tornado winds, but pretty damn close. I was at school the same day, outside in the morning and afternoon getting kids out of cars, and putting them back in. The gusts were so strong, I wouldn't have been surprised if one of the kids flew away. In a more comically sad note, a friend of mine has a Chihuahua. She took him outside to pee, and when he lifted his leg, he was knocked over from the gusts.
Hubs and I live in a Homeowner's Association (HOA) community where the houses are models in a series, you pick the model that best fits you with the trimmings you need/want, they build it quickly, and it looks all purdy and stuff when you move in. Now don't get me wrong. We LOVE our house. It's beautiful on the inside and out, spacious, and has a great floor plan. I swear, when I first saw the model, I thought I was on the set of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
Two problems I have with these houses is that neighbors' houses are, like, 10 feet away, and the fences are made from cheap wood, and consequently don't last very long.
That being said, we share our fence with 3 houses: 1 on either side, and 1 behind us. So far, it's the back part of the fence that is standing strong the best. Our house faces north, and lately, when it's windy or gusty, the winds have been blowing east or west, with nothing but our fences "containing" them. Part of the problem with the fence construction is that the posts themselves are stuck 2' directly into the ground, without cement or anything. Further, the fences have 2 crossbars, a lower and upper, and then the planks that actually go along the fence are probably 3" wide, and maybe ½" thick, but 6' long. And they're cheap wood.
Now, we moved into our home back in June 2008, and it's now March 2013, so nearly 5 years later, and one side of our fence is essentially dead, thanks, in part to the gusty winds, but mostly because of cheap materials and installation.
My dream fence would be a wall made of those heavy, gray cinder blocks, but that would cost easily $10K. And a teacher can't afford anything like that unless we made it into a 4-year loan finance deal.
On the plus side of all this homeowner drama, the neighbor on the other side of my dying fence is a gardener/landscape artist, that, from what I can tell in his back yard, is pretty damn good at his job. So we made a deal: he'd cover the labor if we paid for the materials. So as bad as it looks out there right now, in a few days, it'll be the BEST part of the fence. We're getting metal posts (likely in cement) to make the fence stand longer than a single digit number of years.
To return to the aforementioned HOA, I remember attending a meeting for homeowners, and I asked why the fences were so...well...crappy. The answer I was given is that the fences were meant to define property lines, not built to last. So MY question is, how will they continue to define property boundaries if they DON'T last?
My house is great. My fence is crap, and Mother Nature can be rude sometimes. So my advice to anyone interested in buying a home in the future, ask about your fences, and make sure you invest in them whatever you need to make them last. If you signed your life away for 30 years like we did, you want something pleasant to welcome you home. Take care of it, and it'll take care of you.
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