Wood fencing in Lancaster, California

Why homeowners still pick wood here

Nothing else gives you a solid 6 ft wall of privacy at wood's price, and on a hot afternoon that solid panel is also shade and a windbreak for the patio behind it. In the in-town subdivisions, where lots sit close together and the back neighbor's window looks right at your slider, a cedar fence buys the yard back. It is also the friendliest material to customize: a lattice cap, a board-on-board good-neighbor pattern that looks finished from both sides, or a horizontal slat face on a newer home.

The honest trade-offs are two. First, upkeep. Lancaster sun is brutal, with intense UV and very low humidity, so bare wood silvers fast and boards will check and cup if you never touch them. A stain or seal every two to three years is the price of keeping the color. Second, wind. Wood is the material most exposed to it, which is exactly why the build details below matter more than the boards you pick.

Building a wood fence that survives the wind

Here is the physics, plainly. A 6 ft solid fence has no gaps, so it does not let air through, it stops it. An 8 ft bay of that panel is 48 square feet of sail, and in a 50 mph gust that is hundreds of pounds of lateral force trying to lever your post out of the ground. Nearly every leaning fence we replace in Lancaster failed at the post, not the panel. So we build from the hole up:

• Deeper embedment. Roughly 3 feet of post in the ground for a 6 ft fence, not the 18 to 24 inches that would pass in a calm climate.
• Wider footings. A larger diameter concrete footing gives the post more soil to push against, which is what actually resists the overturning load.
• Closer post spacing. Posts at 6 feet on center or tighter, instead of 8, so each one carries less sail area.
• Heavier posts. Steel posts or upsized timbers on exposed runs, because a standard 4x4 is the weak link once the footing is right.
• Real concrete, always. Tamped soil or gravel does not hold in loose desert sand. Every post gets concrete.
• A wind-permeable option. On the most exposed lines we suggest a shadowbox, spaced-picket, or lattice-top design so some air passes through rather than the whole wall fighting the gust.

The other half of the story is what is under the sand. Much of Lancaster sits on old wind-formed dune soil over a cemented caliche hardpan. Caliche is close to rock, and it can stop an auger dead. We break through it and anchor the post below, because a footing resting on top of hardpan in loose sand is a post waiting to walk. Elsewhere the ground is sandy loam with no caliche at all and the digging is easy. We can usually tell which you have from the first hole.

Cedar or redwood, and the styles we build

We build almost all Lancaster wood fence in western red cedar or construction heart redwood. Both resist rot and insects, both take a sealer evenly, and both handle dry heat far better than pine, which twists and splits quickly in this climate. On style, these are the ones that come up most:

• Dog-ear or flat-top privacy. The standard 6 ft backyard fence, boards butted tight. Maximum privacy, maximum sail, so it gets the full wind package.
• Board on board. Overlapping boards that look finished from both sides, which keeps the neighbor happy on a shared line.
• Shadowbox. Alternating boards with a small gap, so it reads private from an angle and lets air move through. A smart pick on a windy corner.
• Lattice or trellis top. Privacy below, an open cap above, adding height without adding a solid surface for the wind to grab.
• Horizontal slat. A cleaner modern face for the newer homes, built on steel posts so the long spans stay true.

Height rules on a Lancaster lot

Lancaster does its own permitting rather than going through the county, so the code you care about is Lancaster Municipal Code 17.08.130. It allows a fence up to 4 feet in a front-yard setback or a corner-lot side-yard setback, and up to 6 feet in side and rear yard setbacks, measured from finished grade at the base to the top edge of the material. A director's review can allow up to 25 percent over that with findings. Building and Safety does not require a building permit for a residential fence under 7 feet, but Planning can still regulate by location, and fences need to sit behind the property line and clear of the corner-visibility area near the curb. We check all of that on the estimate rather than after the posts are in.

Wood fence pricing in Lancaster

Ranges cover posts, panels, hardware, and labor. Steel posts, tighter spacing, caliche digging, old fence removal, and gates move you up the range. For a fuller cost picture, read Lancaster fence cost guide.

Keep reading

The main guide to Lancaster fence builders pulls all of this into one page.