Finishing and the First Year of a New Fence
Nothing is finished on the last afternoon
A new fence keeps changing for about a year, and most of what happens in that window is normal. Knowing which changes are expected saves an unnecessary complaint, and more usefully, it tells you which ones are worth raising while the workmanship warranty still applies.
Concrete and posts
Footings reach a workable strength in a day or two and keep gaining for weeks afterward. Leaning hard on a brand new gate post, or hanging a heavy drive gate onto concrete poured that morning, is the classic way to end up with a post that is very slightly out of plumb forever. Give the corners and gate posts a week of gentle treatment.
Wood is still wet when it arrives
Most cedar and treated lumber leaves the yard well above the moisture content it will settle at in an Oklahoma summer. As it dries, several things follow.
- Boards narrow. Gaps of a quarter inch or so opening between pickets that were tight on installation day is shrinkage, not a mistake.
- Some faces cup or bow slightly. A handful across a long run is ordinary; a whole section doing it points at material.
- Fine surface checks appear along the grain, most visibly on the sun facing side.
Any finish should wait until that drying has largely happened, because sealing wet lumber traps the moisture and the coating fails early. The practical test is a few dry weeks and water no longer beading on the surface.
The ground moves too
Expansive clay swells through a wet spring and shrinks back in a hot dry stretch, and a fence line sitting in it rides that movement. Small seasonal changes in how a gate meets its latch are the visible symptom. Hail and the spring wind supply the other half of the first year test, and a fence's first March is a fair trial of how it was built.
Two walks worth doing
At six months
Check every gate for square and latch engagement, put a wrench on the hinge bolts since hardware backs off as wood shrinks around it, and look along the top of the run for any post that has moved out of line with its neighbors.
At twelve months
Repeat that, then look at the base of the posts for soil that has pulled away, at any board that has gone significantly beyond ordinary cupping, and at fasteners for rust streaks, which say something about what was used. Twelve months is also where many workmanship warranties end, so anything you have been meaning to mention should be mentioned before then rather than after.
Movement, shrinkage and weathering are the wood and the ground doing what they do. A leaning post, a rail pulling loose from a post, or a gate that no longer closes at all belongs in a phone call.