Fences & Gates

Meanwhile, the aluminum gates and fences have arrived, so we took the trailer to pick them up in Pinellas Park and brought them home for the next project.

This is a pool safety requirement, so the fences have to be a certain height for non-climbable (chain link is considered climbable) and the latch for the gate has to be a certain height, which is why a lot of people get those vertical latches that stick up above the gate and you have to pull up.  The gate also has to be self-closing and latching.

We aren't crazy about those stick-up latches, so we have a regular latch on a taller gate, and so that wouldn't look weird, we got a taller fence.  So we're going to be more than legal.

Also, I've read unofficially that the fences are supposed be up before the pool is filled, but the PB doesn't seem to care, so he's pressing on. Anyway, we do get the right gate up before the pool is filled, and there is a non-latching short gate on the left side, so we're good enough for now.


One afternoon was the right fence, but we ran out of time so the gate is just held up with yellow line in the picture at the top. We attached all the hardware and hung in the next day. The span is just over 9' and we wanted to get close enough to the neighbor's gate post that the separation would be "legal".

The fence is light but sturdy and the gate swings very nicely.  Not sure if the dogs are as fond of it as I am, because there will be no more roaming the neighborhood anymore. (There has never been a fence on this side of the house.)

The third day after work and late into the night, Matt installed the left gate, which was a little trickier with the plants over there.  I had to put protective measures on my Golden Hawaiian bamboo plant there behind the fence, especially the giant new culm that was coming up on the fence side of the plant, of course. (A culm is a new "stalk" of bamboo that is coming up from the rhizome, or roots, under the ground.)

Anyway, the gates are great and it's nice to be able to let the dogs out back without watching them.

Last picture is just to get an idea of what the right side of the house looks like now (with the air conditioning until moved up from the back before we started the pool project.)