Six Things to Settle Before a Fence Goes Up in Allen

Most fence projects that go wrong in Allen do not go wrong during construction. They go wrong in the week before, when something that should have been settled on paper gets assumed instead: where the line actually runs, who had to approve the design, what is buried along the route. Each of those is cheap to resolve beforehand and expensive afterwards, because the remedy once posts are in concrete is to take them back out. Six items cover almost all of it, and they are worth working through in this order.

1. Establish the property line before anything else

The existing fence is not evidence of the boundary. Fences get built to the wrong line, get rebuilt along the wrong line because the old one was there, and drift over decades of replacements. Building a new fence on the assumption that the old one was correct is how a boundary error becomes permanent and expensive.

The authoritative answer comes from a survey. If the property was bought recently there may already be one in the closing documents, and the plat for the subdivision shows the lot dimensions, but neither replaces a current survey when the line is genuinely unclear or when a neighbour has questioned it before. Survey pins are sometimes still in the ground at the lot corners and can be located with a metal detector.

Where the line is uncertain, the safe move is to set the fence clearly inside it on your own property. That costs a few inches of yard and removes the risk entirely. Building right on a disputed line, or slightly past it, is the version that ends up in a conversation nobody wanted.

2. Request utility locates and wait the required notice

This one is not optional and it is not advice. Texas law requires excavators to contact 811 at least two business days before excavating, excluding weekends and holidays, and the requirement applies to homeowners working in their own backyard just as it does to contractors. A fence line is a row of holes three feet deep, which is exactly the kind of digging the law exists for.

Two business days is a real constraint on scheduling rather than a formality. A request made on Thursday does not clear until the following Tuesday in practice once a weekend is in the way, so the locate request should go in before a start date is agreed with anyone, not after.

The marks that come back cover public utilities up to the meter. Anything installed privately on the property afterwards, such as a sprinkler system, landscape lighting, a gas line run out to a grill or a pool, is usually not included. Those are yours to know about, and they are the lines most often hit on a residential fence job.

3. Get the HOA's approval in writing

In much of Allen a homeowners association has a say in the fence before the city does, and its requirements are enforceable. Texas Property Code Chapter 202 governs what associations may and may not enforce, and while it protects a list of homeowner rights, it still permits an association to regulate the type of fencing a property owner installs.

In practice that means the association may specify material, height, stain colour, picket style, or which way the finished side faces. Some also restrict what can go along a greenbelt, a common area or a corner lot. The requirements are usually in the dedicatory instruments or architectural guidelines rather than somewhere obvious on a website.

Submit for approval early and keep the written response. Approval timelines vary and an architectural committee that meets monthly can add weeks to a project. It is also the document that settles any later question about whether the fence was allowed, which is worth more than the effort of filing it away.

4. Confirm what the city needs from you

Allen's Building and Permitting Division handles permitting, plan review and inspections for work in the city, and it is the office to ask about a residential fence rather than relying on what a neighbour did a few years ago. Requirements change, and they differ by lot situation, particularly on corner lots and anywhere a fence would sit near a sidewalk, easement or drainage way.

The division can be reached directly and also runs an online self-service portal for permit types and applications, with a published fee schedule. Two questions cover most residential projects: whether this particular fence needs a permit, and what the height and placement rules are for this specific lot. Get the answer from them rather than from a contractor's assumption, and note who you spoke to.

Separately, the city's property maintenance standards will apply to the fence for the rest of its life: damaged sections totalling twenty square feet must be repaired or replaced, anything likely to fall must be dealt with, external bracing is not accepted, and the fence must not sit more than twelve inches out of vertical measured at the top. Those standards are worth reading once at the start, because they quietly argue for spending more on posts than on pickets.

5. Talk to the neighbour before the crew arrives

A fence on a shared line affects two properties, and the conversation costs nothing before the work and a great deal afterwards. It is also where several practical decisions get made: which way the finished side faces, what happens to the old fence and who disposes of it, whether the two of you want to share the cost of a line you both use.

Access matters too. Setting posts along a shared line often means working from both sides, and a crew that has to build an entire run from one side does slower and sometimes worse work. Agreeing access in advance is a small thing that shows up in the finished line.

If the neighbour disagrees about where the boundary sits, that is the moment to resolve it with a survey rather than to proceed and hope. A fence is a visible, permanent assertion about a property line, and a disagreement that was mild beforehand tends not to stay mild once posts are set.

6. Fix the gate positions before the layout is set

Gates are decided last and regretted most. A gate is not a section of fence with hinges; it is a separate structure that needs its own heavier posts and deeper footings, so its position has to be known before the post layout is marked out, not adjusted once the holes are dug.

Think through what actually has to pass through, and measure it rather than estimating. A mower is the usual minimum, but a trailer, a skip, a pallet of materials for a future project or a side-yard route for a pool build all set a wider requirement, and a gate that is six inches too narrow is useless for the job it was meant for. Where a wide opening is needed, a double gate sags less than a single wide one.

If an automatic opener is anywhere in the plan, even years out, say so now. Operators impose loads and clearances that change the post specification, and building to that standard at the start costs far less than revisiting the posts later. The gate installation and automatic opener requirements are worth settling alongside the fence rather than after it.

The Two Items Worth Doing First

Of the six, two are genuinely time-gated and everything else can move around them: the 811 locate request, which carries a legally required two-business-day wait, and the HOA submission, which can sit with a committee for weeks. Start both the day you decide to build, before you have chosen a material or spoken to anyone about a schedule, because they are the two items capable of pushing a start date and neither gets faster by being chased. The survey question sits just behind them, and only becomes urgent if the boundary turns out to be unclear. Everything else on this list is a conversation or a measurement, and those can happen while the clock on the first two is running.

If the lot has an awkward boundary, a shared line with an uncertain history, or a gate that has to take something wider than a mower, it is worth walking the property with someone before the layout is fixed. Allen Fence Installation can look at the route and the gate positions as part of quoting the work, across the full range of fence services.