Follow these Tips to Care for Your Wooden Fencing and Extend its Life
Establishing a definitive border around your home serves multiple benefits. It keeps neighbors from encroaching on your property, your pets from escaping, and your children from wandering off during playtime. Most homeowners gravitate toward the basic wooden fence for several reasons, but wood becomes damaged over time from the weather, rot, abuse and incidental impacts.
Because a new fence is not inexpensive, you need to adopt every measure you can to make sure it lasts as long as possible.
Choosing the Right Fencing
The first step in preserving your fence is to choose the right materials at the onset. Rather than select standard wood species, such as cedar, there are more hard-wearing options that you should consider.
Some of the best products your contractor will show you are ipe and Trex. Ipe is an extremely dense, tropical hardwood. Thanks to its denseness, ipe is three times harder than cedar, which gives it a distinct advantage when it comes to absorbing impacts. It shares the same fire rating as concrete and steel. It also resists mildew and decay–especially important if you are living in areas like the Pacific Northwest. With proper maintenance, ipe fencing can last anywhere from 25 to 50 years in wet climates such as the Portland area.
Protect Against Water
One of the biggest threats to fencing can be rot and moisture. So, you should always have your fencing treated by a waterproofing contractor in Portland, who will use the right tools and products to prevent damage to your garden or property from chemicals, a real hazard should you try to treat your fence by yourself.
Keep on Top of Repairs
Occasionally, your fencing may be damaged by bad weather, other natural causes, or accidental impacts. When this happens, it is best to not let it go unrepaired for long. The sooner you can repair any damage, the less likely you will need to replace sections of fence later because of further deterioration to wood exposed by the damage.
If you are still unsure of the best ways to preserve the life of your fence, then contact a reputable fencing company. It will be able to offer you the best advice on available products and services.
Sources:
Ipe, Wood-Database.com
How to Make Wooden Posts and Fences Last Longer, dailyherald.com
