Canoga Park fence questions, answered straight

Wrought iron tops the list at $50 to $120 a linear foot installed. Vinyl runs $40 to $70, wood $30 to $60, and chain link is the floor at $18 to $40. What moves you inside a band is the length of the run, the grade you pick, and how many gates hang on it. Canoga Park runs on the lower side because the flat, easy-digging ground keeps post setting quick.

Chain link, at $18 to $40 a linear foot, which is why you see it on back lines and dog runs and almost never facing the street. For six feet you cannot see through, cedar is the least expensive honest route: run 150 feet of it and the bill lands between $4,500 and $9,000 installed. Vinyl buys the same six feet for more money and then never asks for another dollar of upkeep.

For a fence at or under the allowed height, no. The permit line at LADBS starts above whatever your own lot allows, at any wall built to hold back soil, and at any work reaching into the public right of way, all of it City of Los Angeles review. Most Canoga Park tracts also sit outside an HOA, so there is no architectural committee queued up behind the city.

Six feet in the side and rear yards, and eight on a lot at least forty feet across, which most of the Canoga Park grid is. About three and a half feet across the required front yard, under City of Los Angeles rules. A corner lot brings in the visibility triangle at the intersection, which trims height there so drivers can see past you. Go above the height your lot is entitled to and you are pulling a permit.

Usually, yes. Under California Civil Code section 841, better known as the Good Neighbor Fence Act, the reasonable cost of a boundary fence is presumed to fall equally on both adjoining owners, since both of them get the benefit. Before anything gets built you owe that neighbor written notice, at least 30 days of it, spelling out the problem, the fence you intend to put up, and the price you expect. It also has to tell the neighbor that the law starts from an even split, and roughly when your crew would be there. A different split is perfectly legal, it just has to be on paper.

Yes, and it is one of our most common Canoga Park jobs. In the older Owensmouth core along Sherman Way, many homes are served by a rear alley, which is often the weak point of the yard. We build a solid wood, iron, or chain link alley run with a heavy self-latching gate, and set the posts for daily use so the gate does not sag.

Bell Creek and Arroyo Calabasas meet just east of Canoga Park High School, and the lots nearest that confluence hold water longer than the rest of the flat. Those get drainage-aware footings, with a gravel base and somewhere for water to go, instead of a post standing in saturated ground. Across the rest of Canoga Park the alluvium drains fast and a standard concrete footing is plenty.

Pick the material and you have mostly picked the number. Cedar and redwood give you 15 to 20 years if a seal goes on every few years, and chain link lands in that same 15 to 20. Vinyl will go 20 to 30 years or better and ask almost nothing of you. Wrought iron gets past 40 years when somebody keeps the powder coat in shape. The hot inland sun is the main thing that shortens a wood fence here.

It does. California law wants a barrier around any residential pool, five feet at minimum, hung with a gate that closes and latches on its own and opens away from the water rather than toward it. Enforcement here runs through the City of Los Angeles. Removable mesh is the cheap route at $15 to $30 a linear foot. A permanent metal barrier costs $40 to $90, and most people here build it once and let it serve as the yard fence too.