Why is fencing so expensive?

[TiredMummy2015]

I'm getting quotes to have the old fencing in our garden taken down and replaced. The garden is about 20 foot by 75 foot. I appreciate it's quite a bit of work but shouldn't take more than two days surely? I've had two quotes so far and both are in the region of 4K!!! That seems ludicrous to me but maybe I'm missing something? Even with expensive fence panels the materials can't be more than 1k so how are they justifying the other 3k??

20foot long or 20foot wide?

pressed send too soon: are you talking about 170foot of fencing or 115 foot?

Close boarded or panels. The latter will be considerably cheaper but not as strong.

The garden is 75 feet long and roughly 20 feet wide. We want fencing down one side and at the bottom. Plus two new gates.
We want 5 or 6 foot close boarded panels.

Are they doing concrete posts?
Good quality fencing is expensive (but should last)

I think the posts are wooden.

That sounds like way too much. Ours is about 60 by 25 and we had the panels on one side replaced, and a whole new run at the end. I think it was about £800. That was the very expensive, good reputation, paying-for-quality company that is generally the best round here.

Two days should be fine, are you having concrete posts or wooden ones? Is it posh fencing?

Ours is pressure treated but nothing fancy.

We've just had a quote for new fencing in our garden. The posts have bowed because the developer put up the cheapest possible and now 4 years down the line a row 66ft long (11 x 6ft panels) need replacing.

Because we want trellis on top of the fence for extra privacy we need 10ft concrete posts which are apparently £40 more expensive per post than 8ft ones because they have to be special ordered. Could it be a similar issue?

Ours has come in at about £2,900 plus VAT.

Sorry x posts

Say 170 feet or 52 meters of fencing at £65 a metre is around £3400. Not wildly out.

Costing for 95' approx. with closeboard panels and two single width gates, 8'wooden posts and concrete/sundries comes to just over £1K as you said.

I reckon 2 days work for 3 men. Plus overheads, rubbish removal etc.

..about 3K is about right. Add VAT and it's not far off 4K.

Each panel is about £60 for something that will last and given you are looking at 170ft of fencing that is at least 30 panels. You then need posts, again about 30 of them plus the concrete to set them in the ground properly. Just in raw materials you are looking at about £3000 for a quality job. Also you have to remember that £4000 includes VAT. The company are only really charging you £3200.

I think a realistic cost for someone else to do it is £5000. If you want to pay less DIY it. I never contract fencing out. It's really simple once you measure everything out. Go on YouTube and watch some tutorials.

Oh and get the concrete posts if you want to make life easier on yourself in the long run.

Ours was just redone. Like pp we had cheap crap put up by the builder which shrank then blew down.

We now have close boarded fencing, not panels, wooden posts and nice capping along the top. It cost us £460 for 30 foot. Taking away the old fence was £30.

It took them 3 half days (due to fading winter light) to do ours and next doors, 60 odd foot in total.

Fyi: we live in a very windy area. We were advised against concrete posts with panels, as they suggested the wind is probably strong enough to flex the panels out of the posts. Hence ours is posts, horizontals, and then close boarded all the way down.

Just had 60ft of closeboard done last week (Outer London) - 10ft of 6'6" on the patio, the rest of the run in 6' including a huge amount of clearance, (old fence, removing and disposing of ivy & pruning trees/bushes), 4 inch posts and I got them to use 4ft concrete spurs to bolt the wooden posts to so I don't have to worry about them rotting away at the base, came to £1250+VAT

We are outer London too. What's the name of the people you used? I didn't know you were allowed to go higher than 6ft?

We are only replacing the fence on one length of the garden not both. I'm not sure it's as much as 170ft of fencing?

The trickiest part will be removing the old fence I think. It's a hand made picket fence and each section between concrete posts is 10 foot wide.

Have sent you details.

I believe you're allowed to go up to 2 meters, just over 6'6"

Technically you can go higher providing you have your neighbours permission. Ours is more than happy for us to go to 8ft.

We had 26 six ft (156'?) good quality panels fitted to two sides of our garden (other side is walled) in December 2014 and paid £2740 approx. Wooden posts and gravel boards. This took about eight days but included some digging out/clearing PO's crap!