Fence or deck costs in Knoxville

Once a fence is more than five feet behind the front of your house, out of a corner lot's side yard, and not along the back street of a lot with streets front and back, Knoxville's zoning code sets no height limit on it at all. The cap is up front: from five feet behind the front building line out to the front lot line, and in the side yard of a corner lot, a privacy fence or wall can be 42 inches tall. Open fences have no limit there either. Fences can go right on the lot line, except inside the visibility triangle at a corner.

Decks get some room in the setbacks. A deck can reach up to 10 feet into a required rear setback and up to five feet into a side setback, but it can't reach into the required front setback.

Hillsides are the other thing to know. The city's Hillside Protection overlay exists because building on steep ground can bring erosion and soil slippage. Inside it, development needs a certificate of appropriateness, and the land you're allowed to disturb shrinks as the slope gets steeper. Existing single-family lots of an acre or less are exempt.

That ground gets plenty of rain. Knoxville's airport averages about 52 inches of precipitation a year, with a tenth of an inch or more on about 86 days.