A Taller Fence for Dummies

Extend the height of a privacy fence

Here at the Antisocial Network we run across dozens of half-wit freelancers every day. Although most of them take a shotgun approach to their topics, some "specialize." You might find them specializing in science at HubPages, cooking at eHow and travel at InfoBarrel, perhaps because once they've created a template for a site or found a useful basic reference they get the often mistaken impression that they have the subject well in hand. Unfortunately, some of them don't. Take the case of Lacy Enderson, a Biblical counselor who wrote tens (if not hundreds) of how-to articles for eHow, many on construction and home repair – and got most of them wrong (for which she's already collected ten DotD awards). Take, for example, the post she wrote for some poor schmuck who wanted to know, "How Can I Make a Fence Taller?" (formerly at Hunker.com, now at SFGate.com). Well, whoever it was that asked, he came to the wrong person...

Let's see what Lacy has to say in the DMS¹-mandated 75 to 100-word introduction:

"Depending upon the type of fence you have, it can be simple or more complicated, but definitely easy for any homeowner to accomplish. Extending a chain length fence would require a bit more work. Making a wooden fence taller only requires adding more wood slats to the existing wood slats. This article will discuss how to make a block wall fence taller."

That passage left a whole lot of things to be desired. For one, block walls are pretty rare except among people who don't do DIY work (like, oh, we dunno – Pablo Escobar, maybe?). And then there's the whole "Extending a chain length fence would require a bit more work" crap, although that would probably be the easiest to write: "Tear it out and start over!" We figured Lacy gave increasing the height of a privacy fence short shrift, even though it's by far the most likely situation, because she couldn't figure out how to do it. You sure as hell can't just "[add] more wood slats to the existing wood slats" (doesn't Enderson know the word "picket"?)! So she goes with creating a "pony wall" that screws to the top of the block wall.

Clueless as ever about the most elementary construction, Enderson instructs her readers to attach a base plate of "2-by-4 material" to the top of the wall, which requires the reader to "...screw it down through... pre-drilled holes with 1/4-inch by 4-inch galvanized concrete screws and a screw gun." Oh, sure, a "concrete screws"! and a "screw gun"! Then, they should, "Nail... 1-foot wall supports to the wall plate every 16 inches on center," followed by placing "a 2-by-4 wall plate across the top of the wall supports" and nailing it in place. Finally, finish by "[attaching] 18-inch-by-3-inch fence slats to the yard side of the pony wall right next to each other the entire length of the wall."

What a moron: if she really wanted to build this pony wall, she should have built the frame and then fixed it in place – and probably not necessarily with a 4-inch lag bolt every 16 inches... While we're at it, we think that Enderson's 18-inch mini-pickets on a 12-inch frame would look like; well, like crap. A much more attractive solution is to not pretend the fence is the same only taller, but to design it so that the addition contrasts with the original (see image). Be that as it may, Lacy's incompetence got us thinking: if you really want to make your fence taller (which, by the way, may be a violation of local codes – check first) that pony wall might be workable: you could make one of tight lattice and set it on top of a fence with a top plate. In reality, though, it's probably smarter to just start over: otherwise, the fence looks like crap. Really, though, could you expect anything better of of a serial Dumbass of the Day like Lacy? We didn't...

¹ DMS -- Demand Media Studios, parent company of eHow (you can't spell "dumbass" without DMS!)

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