About Pocatello Fence

What we do differently

Not much, honestly — and that is rather the point. Fencing is not a complicated trade. It is a trade where a small number of decisions, made out of sight and early in the job, determine whether the fence is still straight in ten years. Post depth. Footing shape. Whether the gate post was treated as a gate post. Whether anyone checked which set of rules applies to your address.

Most of what separates a good fence from a bad one around here is invisible once the last picket goes on. So we tell you what is going in the ground and why, and we itemise it, rather than handing over a single number per foot that could mean almost anything.

Why we go on about frost and ground

Because both of them are published facts here, and most fencing advice online is written for somewhere neither applies. The City of Pocatello lists a frost level of three feet in its design criteria, along with a 45 pound ground snow load and a 115 mph three-second gust. Those are not our opinions about the weather — they are the numbers the city itself builds to.

Frost decides how deep a footing has to go, because water expands when it freezes and lifts anything sitting above it. The ground decides whether you can get there. The Portneuf Valley floor mixes wind-laid silt, river alluvium and coarse rock, and which one is under a given yard can change within a few streets. On some lots an auger goes straight down. On others it stops on rock, and the right answer is a different kind of fence rather than a shallower hole and an optimistic promise about how long it will stand.

A national spec sheet will not tell you which of those you have. Neither will advice written for a state where the ground barely freezes.

What we will not tell you

We would rather be straight about this than let a website imply things.

• We do not publish reviews, ratings or star counts. There is no operating history behind them yet, and inventing them is both a Google policy violation and a lie.
• We make no claims about credentials. Idaho does require most construction contractors to sign up with the state, and the state keeps a public list you can search for anyone quoting you. We are not going to make assertions about ourselves on a web page you have no way to check — ask us directly, and then go and verify it rather than taking a badge on a website at face value.
• We will not give you legal advice. Where a property line actually runs, whether a neighbour has to share the cost of a shared fence, and what an old deed restriction means are questions for a surveyor or an attorney. We will build to whatever line you establish.
• We will not promise a price before seeing the property. Slope, access, corners, gates and old fence removal move the number enough that a phone quote is a guess dressed up as a figure.

How we quote

You send the property details through the form. We come out and walk the line with you — measuring the actual run, finding the corners, looking at the grade. We check the permit requirements for your address and, where there is one, your HOA's covenants, because those two frequently disagree about what you are allowed to build. Then you get an itemised written number covering materials, post specification and depth, gates, and haul-off.

If something would change the price once digging starts, you hear about it before it happens rather than on the final invoice.

Where we work

Pocatello, Chubbuck, Inkom, McCammon and Blackfoot, and the surrounding parts of Southeast Idaho — including property outside city limits, where a city ordinance does not apply and county requirements and recorded deed restrictions govern instead. Each of those five cities has its own page on this site because the permit rules, the ground and the subdivision covenants are genuinely different in each one.