The short answer
Most timber fences don't fail — their posts do. The palings and rails you can see are usually fine; the post has rotted where it meets the soil, and the whole run leans on the survivors. That's why repair is so often the honest answer: new posts and rails under the fence you already have, at a fraction of the disruption of ripping the lot out. And on the money side, NSW law is on your side too — under theDividing Fences Act 1991, the cost of a sufficient boundary fence is generallyshared equally between neighbours, repairs included.
| Symptom | Usual cause | Fix level |
|---|---|---|
| Whole run leaning | Posts rotted at the ground line | New posts, same fence |
| Gate sagging or scraping | Hinge post moved, or the gate lacks bracing | Re-hang, brace or reset the hinge post |
| Missing or split palings | Age or storm — palings are the sacrificial layer | Patch new palings into the run |
| Whole run wobbly | Posts spaced too far apart, or rails undersized | New rails plus intermediate posts |
The one repair that isn't worth doing: propping a rotten post with a stake and hoping. It buys a season, moves the load onto the next post, and turns a two-post repair into a whole-run one.
Why fences lean in the first place
Timber rots fastest where air and moisture trade places — which for a fence post is exactly at the soil line. Above ground the post dries out; below ground it's too oxygen-starved to rot quickly; the ground line gets the worst of both, and that's where a twenty-year-old post snaps clean when you push it. Add the North Shore's clay soils, which swell when wet and shrink when dry, and posts get worked loose in their footings season after season. Undersized footings finish the job: a post set in a shallow scoop of concrete — or worse, dry-packed soil — has nothing to resist a southerly with a fence acting as its sail.
That failure pattern is also the good news. Because the rot concentrates at the posts, the fence above them is often years from done — sound rails, straight palings, good hardware. A carpenter can pull the run back to plumb on new posts set in proper concrete footings and give the same fence another decade or more.
Repair or replace: the honest test
We use a simple logic on every fence we're asked to look at:
- Posts gone, timber sound: repair. New posts (or posts sistered alongside), rails renewed where needed, palings patched in. Most leaning fences live here.
- Rails soft as well as posts: borderline. Rails carry every paling, so once they've gone spongey you're rebuilding the skeleton anyway — price both options.
- Palings brittle, splitting at every nail: replace. When the cladding itself is done, patching becomes a subscription, not a repair.
- More than roughly a third of the run failing: replace. Past that point a repair costs most of a new fence and delivers half its life.
The test is whether the money extends the fence's life or just postpones the same decision. A franchise that only sells new fences will read that test one way; a carpenter who does both can afford to read it straight.
Not sure which side of the line your fence is on? Send a couple of photos and the rough length — we'll tell you repair or replace, straight, with an itemised written quote either way. See our fencing and fence repairs service.
Storm damage: the first 48 hours
When a storm or a falling limb takes a fence down, do things in this order. First,make it safe — a collapsed fence with exposed nails, or a suddenly open pool or dog boundary, is the urgent problem; temporary star pickets and mesh solve it for now. Second, photograph everything before touching anything: the fence, the tree or branch that hit it, both sides of the boundary, wide shots and close-ups. Whoever ends up paying — insurer, neighbour, or split — those photos are the record everyone will want, and they're impossible to take after the chainsaws arrive. Third, keep the broken material until it's been seen or photographed properly, then get a written repair quote. What you do with an insurance policy is between you and your insurer; our job is making sure you have the documentation and the itemised quote that make every version of that conversation easier.
The Dividing Fences Act 1991, in plain English
The Act does four sensible things. First, it sets the standard: neighbours must contribute to a "sufficient dividing fence" — not the grandest fence, the sufficient one, judged by what the fence is for, what's usual locally, and what was there before. Second, it splits the cost: adjoining owners generally contribute in equal shares to fencing work for a sufficient fence, and "fencing work" includes repair and re-erection, not just new builds. Third, it handles ambition: if one owner wants ahigher standard than sufficient — taller, lapped-and-capped, hardwood where treated pine would serve — that owner pays the difference above the sufficient fence. Fourth, it covers emergencies: where a fence is damaged or destroyed and needsurgent work, an owner can get the repair done without a notice and still recover the neighbour's share of a sufficient repair.
The formal process runs on a written Fencing Notice, and it's less lawyerly than it sounds:
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1. Talk first | A conversation over the fence with an itemised quote in hand settles most of these before any paperwork exists. |
| 2. Serve a Fencing Notice | A written notice describing the boundary line, the proposed fencing work, and how the cost would be shared. Either owner can serve one. |
| 3. A month to agree | If you agree on the work and the split — in writing is best — you simply proceed. Most notices end here. |
| 4. No agreement: NCAT | After a month without agreement, either owner can apply to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (or the Local Court), which can order what fence is built and who pays what. |
| 5. Urgent damage | The exception to all of the above — urgent repairs can proceed without a notice, with the neighbour's share of a sufficient repair still recoverable. |
Worth knowing before you count on a fifty-fifty split: the sharing rules apply between adjoining owners. Where your fence backs onto certain public land, the authority next door generally isn't required to contribute, so check who actually owns the other side before building the budget around their half.
Front fences are a different animal
A front fence facing the street isn't a dividing fence — there's no neighbour on the other side of it, so the Act's cost-sharing doesn't apply and the cost is yours alone. Planning rules also treat it differently: while most boundary fences up to 1.8m are exempt development, front fences are held lower — commonly 1.2m, and less again for solid walls — with corner blocks and heritage conservation areas carrying their own conditions. The trade-off is that a front fence is the one part of the fencing budget you control completely, and the part the street actually sees.
Talking to the neighbours
Nearly every fencing dispute we've watched unfold came down to a vague number and a surprise invoice. The fix is boring and it works: an itemised written quote both households can read — posts, rails, palings, gate, removal of the old fence, the lot, line by line — so the split is arithmetic instead of argument. That's how we quote every dividing fence, and we're happy to talk to both owners directly so nobody's relaying half-remembered numbers over the fence line. In our experience the formal machinery above almost never gets used once there's a clear, fair figure on paper.
Leaning run, storm damage or a neighbour conversation you'd rather start with real numbers —our fencing service covers repairs and rebuilds across the Lower North Shore, with itemised quotes written for two households. The same repair-before-replace logic applies to tired timber outdoors generally — seedeck repairs and restoration.