Privacy Fence Installation in Jackson, TN

What a Privacy Fence Job Looks Like Inside Jackson City Limits

A privacy fence is the most common thing we build in this town, and inside the city limits it is also the fence with the most paperwork attached to it. Jackson requires a fence permit with a published fee, the application asks for a certified boundary survey or a signed agreement with the neighbor, and the ordinance tells you which way the fence has to face. None of that is hard. It is just the part people find out about after they have already picked a style.

This page is the local side: the permit, the good-side rule, the corner-lot sight lines, and what our ground and weather do to a tall solid fence. For panel designs and wood against vinyl, see privacy fencing generally.

How we build a privacy fence in Jackson

Five steps. The permit and the survey question get settled before anything is ordered.

The Jackson good-side-out rule, and what it means for your design

This is the local rule that surprises people most. Under the city's fence regulation, for vinyl, wood stockade, and other privacy fencing, the finished or good side must face all adjacent neighboring properties and any public right-of-way. So on a standard stockade fence, your neighbor gets the smooth face and you look at the posts and rails from your own patio.

Three honest ways to handle that. Accept it, which plenty of people do. Build board-on-board, where overlapped boards read as finished both directions and shrinkage never opens a daylight gap. Or build shadow box, boards alternating across the rail, finished both ways and letting wind through on purpose. On an exposed line here that last point is worth more than it sounds.

Corner lots get one more layer. In any required front yard nothing may materially impede vision above two and a half feet, and on a corner lot nothing may be erected or planted that impedes vision between two and a half and ten feet above the center-line grade of the intersecting streets, inside the area bounded by the street lines. A solid panel plainly would. Out in the county the same idea applies at intersections within 100 feet of the crossing. In practice the privacy fence starts behind the front of the house, and something open like a picket fence handles the front yard if you want anything there at all.

Jackson soil, drainage, and wind on a solid fence

Jackson sits on the Gulf Coastal Plain over the Mississippi Embayment, and the uplands are mantled in wind-blown loess. That is silt, not rock. Digging goes fast here, which is the good news and also the trap, because loess drains poorly once compacted, holds water, loses strength when saturated, and then moves through wet and dry cycles. A tall solid fence is the least forgiving fence you can put in ground that moves, because every degree of lean shows from the back door. Hole diameter, depth, a footing shape that cannot lift, and concrete crowned so water sheds away from the post are what hold the line. More in fence posts in West Tennessee soil.

Drainage decides where the trouble will be before the fence exists. Plenty of Jackson lots have a low corner or a swale that carries the whole back yard after a hard rain, and the South Fork of the Forked Deer River runs through the area. A solid fence across a drainage becomes a debris dam, and a dam takes out more than the section it started in. On a line like that we hold the boards up and let water pass, or build the low run so it can be reset. In a designated flood hazard area there is a separate development permit to confirm. See fencing floodplain lots.

Wind is the specific risk a privacy fence carries that no other fence does, and Jackson's record is not theoretical. A January 1999 F4 killed six people and injured 106 here, a May 2003 F4 came through downtown and east Jackson, and a February 2008 EF4 hit the Union University campus. Nothing survives a direct hit. What survives ordinary spring wind is footings and hardware built for the load, plus a design that lets some air through instead of standing there like a sail. Repair work is on storm damage.

Jackson lots, neighborhoods, and HOA committees

Property types here run a wide range and each changes the fence. Older in-town lots have mature trees, which means roots in the post line and a canopy dropping limbs. Established streets often have a fence on one or both sides already, so the new one has to meet what is there or deliberately not. Newer development on the edges of town is flatter and more open, which suits a panel system like vinyl and gives wind a clean run at it. Past the city limits, lots get bigger and the paperwork becomes the county's.

Some Jackson-area neighborhoods have a homeowners association, and where one exists its approval is separate from the city permit. We have no published rules for any specific subdivision here, so we will not pretend to. Committees commonly care about height, material, color, and whether panels present a finished face to the street. Pull your covenants and submit before we order anything, and see HOA fence rules. The Bemis Historic District in south Jackson is its own case, sitting in a conservation district where exterior changes need city approval.

Common questions about privacy fence in Jackson

Where this fits with the rest of the work

New fence line is on fence installation, gates on gate installation and repair, the whole picture in town on fence installation in Jackson, and addresses past the city limits on Madison County.

Call or text Greg at (731) 555-1234 and we will come walk the line.