Craft Quantities
Plan & Takeoffs

Plan a fence

Every trade, one set of measurements

Fence planner

A fence is a line and a height, and both matter: everything a fence can be is bought by the metre at a height, and the posts are chosen by it. Give the run those two figures and the posts, their concrete, the rails, the boards and the finish are worked out along it — with chain link and stock wire costed on the same line, because the choice between them is usually what the fence is for rather than what it costs.

New fenceNot drawn yet
  1. 1 Measure the fence
  2. 2 Choose its finishes
  3. 3 Save it to My Project

Give the fence a length and a height, and it is drawn here with every figure beside it.

The fence

Nothing here is required. Each figure appears as soon as it has what it needs.

The length of the run and the height of the fence. Gates are not counted here: how many there are and how wide is a decision about how people get in, and a gate takes its own width out of the run.

Add a fence

A line and a height — the first thing here that is not measured by two edges. Timber, chain link and plain wire are worked out over the same run, and all three stand on the same posts.

Everything the fence needs

In the order the work is done. No row has a figure yet.

Nothing in this fence is everything the fence needs yet. Choose how a surface is finished, or what else is being done, and its rows appear here.

Assumptions assumed

Everything the figures above rest on that you did not give, and what they are still waiting for.

Nothing is assumed yet: give the fence its measurements to begin.

How the planner runs

  1. Give the run its length and the fence its height.
  2. Choose what it is made of — boarded, picket, chain link or stock wire — or leave it and read them side by side.
  3. Take the post spacing the type calls for, or set your own if the ground decides it.
  4. Add the stain or preservative, which is worked out on the faces the boards actually present.
  5. Save it into your project, where it can be priced and where the run opens again next time.

Where the figures come from

Reading for the decisions

Questions

Why does the post count not simply divide the length?
A run of N bays needs N+1 posts, and the last bay is rarely a whole one. The figure counts the ends, and it is worth checking against where the corners actually fall on site: a corner post carries two directions of load and is usually a size up.
How much concrete goes in each hole?
It comes from the post hole calculator at the hole size the post and height call for, times the number of holes on this run. It is the figure most often under-ordered, because a bag rating is for a hole nobody digs that neatly.
Why is the stain figure larger than the area of the fence?
A boarded fence has two faces and the gaps have edges. The finish figure counts what the boards actually present to a brush, which is more than the elevation of the fence, and more again on a picket than on a close-boarded panel.
Does this handle a fence that changes height?
Not in one run. Add a run for each height and the project holds them together — which is also more honest about the posts, because the change of height is where a post has to carry both.

When the work is a job rather than a room. Plenty of it never starts from a space — a slab, a roof, a deck, a panel upgrade. Each of those is a job takeoff: give it the few figures that job is described by, and every trade in it comes back together, the way the room does here.