New home owner who has never had to hire a contractor before. Want to have chain link fence replaced and want to have put in white vinyl fence to match connected town home.
It is just a 40 foot length I need replaced and will need to have one gate. As I get quotes, what kind of price should I expect to pay? What’s considered fair and what’s considered a rip off?
EDIT: Thanks for all the feedback! I think I’m not in the right tax bracket to hire people to do this, so probably going to try to do it myself.
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My time to shine. I own a company that does fences, we specialize in custom vinyl. Obviously this varies by region, but I’ll price vinyl $95-130/ft, and $300 per gate. Depending on if I liked you, what I knew about the soil, travel time to your job, I’d probably come in around $5300, installed
It might sound insane, but my 4 man crew costs about $1100/day to keep on the road. 40’ in bad conditions is 2 days minimum, can easily spill into 3. My materials would be around $1500, so worst case I’m netting in $500 for 3 days of work, which is damn near unsustainable considering the amount of machinery I’ve got in play
What I am learning is that I am not in the correct tax bracket to pay for contractors unless messing up means the house burning down. So probably gonna be DIY this one.
The overhead running a legit business is unreal.
My general advice is don’t use post mix concrete, use regular stone mix and backfill immediately. The backfilled dirt will hold it in place and slow the cure, giving you hours to go back and tweak as you go. That rapid post makes no sense, there’s no urgency in the setting phase, that’s the opposite of what you want.
And remember, if you do a good job it can last 20+ years, so don’t be lazy and take a shortcut because it’s “good enough”. You’re better spending $300 on a rental machine to dig the holes than to set a post that isn’t deep enough. I’m in Canada where frost can be hell, my posts go 4’ down and usually 5 bags concrete per post, then another 3 bags down the post once it’s all assembled. Your 40’ fence I could easily put in 50 bags. Don’t base your shopping list on that, but know that if you care about longevity it takes patience and hard work, like anything else in life
Renting the machine also would be good for your back. Folks can underestimate how hard digging narrow holes in the ground can be.
I second that. I wanted to remove loam in the front garden (here it is 5cm top soil and then hard loam down to the center of the earth, it seems), so I could mix in sand and other stuff in order to actually get something growing there.
I started by shoveling two 90l buckets by hand, and wanted to go to the landfill with them. But up the road was a construction site. I stopped and asked, and they were happy to take my stuff - for free. I went back home and refilled the buckets, and returned to the construction site to dump them again. My back already was quite unhappy about that day, as the clay is rock hard and heavy up here.
There I saw them riding a front loader, and I asked them if they could drop by and just take a load or two with that. And they did. With just two runs they took out more than I could have done with a dozen runs on my own. They really saved my day, and my back. And it only cost me a case of beer.
Folks can underestimate how hard digging
narrowholes in the ground can be.
4ft of concrete will be a nightmare to remove when the post needs to be replaced.
Realistically, one would just dig down half a foot, break up the concrete, cut the post, then backfill the dirt. Put any new post you need a foot to the side. No reason to remove the boulder.
I’ve pulled them before with shovels and a farm jack, and it is a nightmare, dangerous too. Now we have machinery to do it, or a truck and chain, wouldn’t do it manually any more
Get multiple quotes and compare them. The cost will depend on where you are, what the conditions are like, how many jobs are being done by the supplier, etc.
Several quotes will quickly tell you who is charging too much and who is not charging enough.
You can also go to the hardware store and source the materials yourself and put it up on the weekend. Plenty of YouTube video experts to learn from.
Get multiple quotes and compare them.
And don’t go with the cheapest one. I did that. The guy is almost done. Almost nothing about the fence meets what I would consider professional standards. I deeply regret hiring this guy.
There’s specialty equipment needed to stretch chainlink into position.
They’re replacing chain link fence, not installing it, you may have misread the OP
The chain link is coming down.
I don’t have a number for you, but get 2-3 quotes. Labor is expensive, it’s going to be your main cost here, not materials.
Basically every quote I have gotten for anything has been a much higher number than I would have liked by a good margin. Been doing more and more stuff myself as a result. If you get sticker shock at your quotes, a fence replacement is very much so in the realm of something you can do yourself.
Holy shit. Is late stage capitalism regressing?!?
The more unaffordable services are, the more we DIY, the more we become self sufficient, the less we need to buy, the more companies have to do to gain our business, the lower prices get, the more we buy, the lazier we get, the oh fuck, we’re back where we started. Nevermind.
Supply and demand! Everyone went to college and is looking for white collar jobs, thus there is a labor shortage in the construction/contracting industry that is leading to rising prices. Getting a job in the trades is pretty solid right now.
Labor costs are insane. I know these laborers aren’t getting paid $200 an hour, but that’s what I get charged for them.
I’m assuming you’re in the US, look up the prices for vinyl fence on home Depot or Lowe’s website. They have pre build items for that type of fence. I would 2-2.5x your material estimate to account for labor, markup, and misc items that are needed. Removal and haul away of a chain link depends on what it looks like now. All in I would guess $4-5k if there isn’t much custom work.
I would say that if you are physically capable and have the time, fences are pretty easy to DIY with a shovel, level, and drill. there are plenty of resources online showing you how. And make sure to call your local dig safe number.
Oof yeah if it is coming out to 4k+ then I probably am gonna be a DIYer.
Installing a fence isn’t that difficult and you can probably rent a lot of the tools you need from somewhere like Home Depot.
Can’t promise you much but…
You could maaaaybe look at your State’s Department of Transportation (So like TXDoT for Texas) and find their Bid Tabulations, get an average for 8’ Wooden Fence Repair or 8’ Fence Installation for this quarter, put it in a spreadsheet and multiply it by values between 1.0 and 2.0 (so 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc) and that can be your controlling range for price escalation for a private homeowner instead of a mass purchaser. It should be per linear foot.
You multiply those values by your total linear feet to get a total estimate and see if the quotes you get from installers in your area that are within that range, and where they are within it. Look up the companies that you can get quotes from and their reputation if any, and try to pick someone in the median of your range.
If your local municipal entity, city or county etc, has worked with them, that would be phenomenal but those often don’t do private homeowners for clients.
Best of luck.
R.H.
That’s a pretty small job. You may get outrageous quotes because a contractor may not want to be bothered.
Materials according to the Home Depot website: EDIT sorry just realized you said 8ft high plus a gate This will raise the materials cost a bit but you get the idea.
5 8ft long vinyl fence panels 6ft high at $109 each = $545
6 8ft high vinyl fence posts at $39 each = $234
6 fence posts caps at $4 each =$24
6 bags fast setting concrete at $7 each =$42
Total $845 in materials Guessing 8hrs labor at $30/hr =$240 I’d estimate around $1,100 or so. Adjust for sales tax and labor costs in your area.
FYI if you want to learn basic Home owner DIY skills, this is a good place to start. It’s a bit of work digging the holes but it’s not rocket surgery.
You would need at least twice that amount of concrete unless you are digging an undersized hole. 6 bags would be adequate for a chain-link with 6" holes, you want 8" holes for 5x5 posts.
To do 8ft high fences, you need 12ft posts. 8ft posts are for a 5ft high fence. Also 8ft high fences usually have 6ft wide panels, so they would need 7 panels. So closer to $1,900 in just vinyl.
You’re not going to find a legitimate business anywhere in the country that only charges $30 an hour for labor. That’s probably what they pay their laborer, but they also have benefits to account for, insurance, gas, machinery, the list is endless. Plan on $100-$600 an hour depending on where you are.
Labour and materials depends on your country and location. Do you need to pay a
bribepermit to local government as well? Will the neighbour on the other side pay half? Does it need to be painted?Get a few quotes, ask for references of other fences they’ve built, and compare locally.
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If it’s flat, level ground, then $30 per foot for wood or hog panels. Add money if brush needs to be cut, ground leveled, or you want something like vinyl, cedar, or painted wood.
