High-quality residential fencing in Philadelphia comes in many different varieties, including plastic, metal, vinyl, and wood fencing. The latter option is one of the most popular because it looks excellent and provides many great benefits that keep your yard looking great. However, this type of fencing requires the most maintenance and repairs due to the unique nature of the wood materials.
That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t consider this type of fencing, however. Instead, you need to make sure that you fully understand all of the necessary maintenance methods to keep it secure and stable. The following information will provide you with the insight that you need to keep your fencing as secure as possible and resistant to various types of damage and other issues.
Maintenance Keeps Your Fence Strong
Whenever you install residential fencing around your home, you need to make sure that you perform necessary maintenance to keep it strong. For example, metal fences need rust protection to avoid severe issues while vinyl should be repaired whenever a break occurs. Wood fences are a little different because their material is typically so open to damage from various types of weathering elements.
For example, excessive heat can warp the boards if they are wet due to spring or summer rains. Even worse, snow, ice, and other types of winter weather can stain and warp the boards in a variety of ways. This issue is common with wood fencing – you’ve probably seen a lot of wood fences in your neighborhood that look very worn down due to their exposure to outdoor weather elements.
Thankfully, regular maintenance – say, three or four times during the most rain-filled or hot seasons of the year – on your wooden fences can keep them in great shape for years to come. For example, you can get at least 20 or more years out of your wood fence if you perform essential maintenance and spot repairs when small issues appear. These steps keep small concerns from becoming significant issues that ruin your fence.
Methods for Keeping Your Fence Durable
If you’re worried about your wooden residential fencing suffering from severe damage, you should perform the following steps to keep it stable. These simple methods can be utilized by just about anybody and keep your wood fence strong and resilient:
- Regularly Clean Your Fence – You should clean your wooden fence with a special cleaner at least once or twice a month to break apart dirt, stains, and mold. This step does require a bit of work, however, but you can use a power cleaner to break apart dirt instead of doing the cleaning by hand.
- Sealing the Wood – Add a polyurethane sealer to your fence at least once or twice a year to keep its surface as strong as possible. Use a brush and go over the fence by hand to ensure that you thoroughly coat it as much as possible. Though this may take some time, it ensures that your fence is sturdy.
- Perform Spot Fixes – If you notice breaks in your fence or any other minor issues that you feel comfortable fixing, use wood glue to repair them. Perform these repairs as you see them – you typically don’t need to do this that often but should inspect your fence at least once a month.
- Apply Wood Preservatives – Wooden fences typically perform best if you add high-quality preservatives to their surface after staining them. Preservatives will protect the fibers of the wood in a way that keeps the damage from spreading and becoming a more serious issue.
These are just a few of the simple ways that you can improve the quality of your fence and make it stronger and more resilient. Unfortunately, damage to your fence may spread beyond this point and trigger more problematic issues that require professionals to manage properly.
When to Contact Fencing Experts
Though your wood residential fencing is still in decent shape, you know that you need to perform some maintenance to keep it in great shape. But there are many instances when you shouldn’t try to perform repairs or upgrades to your wooden fencing but should have professionals do it for you. Just a few of these scenarios include when:
- You Don’t Enjoy Maintenance – Though some people may enjoy performing routine maintenance, other people won’t. If you find that you hate following this process, you should contact a professional to have them do it for you to avoid any problematic issues.
- You Can’t Do This Maintenance – Not everybody is going to feel comfortable working with wood stains and cleaners and other chemicals. Therefore, you should contact a professional if you don’t think that you can handle this type of need and need help keeping your wooden fence secure.
- Your Fences Keep Wearing Down – Although you feel comfortable performing maintenance and enjoy fixing up your fences, you merely can’t seem to do it right. For whatever reason, your fence continues to wear down, and you aren’t sure what to do. Contact a professional right away for help.
- More Serious Problems Develop – While a little dirt and a few stains can be easily handled using this process, professionals should manage more severe issues. For example, broken boards or mold that spreads across all of your fences typically needs professional help to manage.
All of these issues can complicate the treatment maintenance of your fences in unpredictable ways. While many people can take care of their residential fencing using essential maintenance, other people will struggle to perform what others might seem as simple steps. Don’t let this stop you from keeping your fences in great shape but, instead, turn to a professional to get the help that you need.
Let Us Help Improve Your Fence
As you can see, wooden fences are very sturdy and reliable if you work hard to provide excellent maintenance that keeps them strong. This type of maintenance is something that you can do on your own during a summer afternoon. However, if you don’t feel comfortable doing this kind of work and would prefer somebody else do it for you, please contact us at Pinecrest Fence Company.
We are a fencing company who serves the greater Philadelphia area, including Bucks and Montgomery counties and provide one of the most effective and high-quality care options in the whole state. Our experts work hard to identify possible issues with your wooden fences and will give the maintenance and repair benefits that you need to keep your residential fencing in Philadelphia as strong as possible.