Fence or deck costs in Dallas-Fort Worth

In the City of Dallas, a fence taller than 4 feet in a front yard needs a permit. So does one taller than 6 feet anywhere else on the lot. Nine feet is the ceiling. Going higher takes the Board of Adjustment's approval, a building permit and plans sealed by a licensed engineer.

The City's checklist also bans some materials outright: sheet or corrugated metal, fiberglass panels, plywood, and plastic unless it's a preformed picket or panel. In a conservation district or historic district, a new fence needs a Certificate of Appropriateness as well, and a lot in a mapped floodplain may need more sign-offs. The suburbs across Dallas-Fort Worth write their own fence rules, so go by the city your address sits in.

Under all of it is the clay. The Blackland Prairie runs south from north of Dallas, and the Texas Water Development Board's sheet on the state soil says that soil, a black clay, covers about 1.5 million acres of it. It also says the clay's very high shrink-swell potential commonly limits building sites in the metro areas where it occurs. The clay swells when it's wet and shrinks when it dries, and posts and deck footings move with it. That movement can pull a gate out of line between a wet spring and a dry August. Ask how deep your posts will go, and whether the deck footings are sized for soil that moves.