A neighbor has a stockade fence, with pickets about 3 inches wide.
It's been in 5 or 7 years and it's easily possible to see between the pickets into his yard. It wast very difficult to see anything when the fence was new.
Does that mean the fence was built with pickets that hadn't been aged enough before construction???? Have the boards shrunk more than they should have??
A friend likes the fence otherwise and wants to hire the same company, but I think she may get an inferior job, if this fence is inferior.
Yes all boards may shrink; depends on the climate/weather, how the fence was painted/treated, especially the edge and end grains of the boards at and since installation etc. Since climate change seems to be definitely occurring warmer climate etc. will also dry, even boards that originally and completely met moisture specification when purchased. The boards in some dry 100 year old house, protected from the weather etc. will, for example, have shrunk considerably.
With using pressure treated on decks its common to butt boards tight, after it dries you have nice gaps for drainage. PT is so wet new it weighs near double of dry wood. To see no gaps some people fence both sides of poles or use dried wood, the job was not inferior on that part, how they sunk and secured posts and type of fasteners is more important than gaps. To insure quality pull a permit and get the free inspection you paid for, and dont fully pay until its fully approved, your friend did pull a permit. The code office can if they want have you remove it otherwise, but its usualy its just a fine.
What about not pressure treated? Does it shrink so that one can see in? I'm pretty sure these pickets aren't PT, (and I know mine aren't, but my 42" fence isn't stockade. It alternates between pickets and open spaces).
I should have said that these pickets aren't PT. Would regular ones also shrink enough that one coudl see through the fence?
It has also had two pickets crack and and slivers fall off. One sliver was small but one was 5 foot long and two inches wide at one end. They also used nails left rust stains on each picket. I forgot about the slivers and rust and I will tell my friend about them.
But now I remember, they are what made me suspicious about the shrinkage.
Its not the installers fault, or the woods fault, what you describe is normal. The only way to make a wood fence you cant see through is to use T&G (tongue and groove) boards or a design that laps the boards.
I suspect that unless the wood is marked "kiln dried" it's gonna shrink. That's what wood does - some woods more than others, of course. Nevertheless, the drier the wood, the less it will shrink.
Of course when dry wood gets wet - like being rained on - it will swell. In a fence, however, that won't matter since the picket is trapped between neighboring pickets.
All wood shrinks or grows as it loses or gains moisture.....its the nature of the material.
But shrinkage varies considerably from species to species. Denser woods generally shrink more than lighter woods. I use the following numbers for rough estimates.......
about 8% tangential shrinkage, 4% radial shrinkage, and 0.1% longitudinal shrinkage from the green to oven dry condition.
Or if I'm working in framing construction with DF, I tell people to use 1/28th (.036") of an inch per inch cross grain
So a 5.5" fence board will shirnk about .2" green to dry (well at least in SoCal). Considering unevenness in the boards what were butted, you can still get about 1/4" gap. :(
T&G or board & batten would eliminate gaps
But IMO a more important consideration is screw material......in my area, fence permits yield not much oversight. I see a LOT of permitted fences getting screws that are too short & rust in a year or two badly streaking the fence boards.
SS screws are more expensive but make all the difference.
Nobody using galvanised nails these days????????? Had to change some PT 2 by 8 deck-boards on our deck recently due to water drips causing limited rot and used screws for the new boards. But the 25+ year old 3 inch and 4 inch hot galvanised nails were holding well and not rusted; even in this maritime climate. So nail away. As my late father in law, who had worked building US bases in Newfoundland, Labrador and Greenland used to say .................. "I want to see at least two or three nails in each match (T&G) board"! The T&G felt and tarred roof on his own still standing house must be over 100 years old now!
I'm puzzled by the issue of "seeing between the pickets"...you can't place unfinished pickets edge to edge without there eventually being some gaps because they expand/contract with heat/moisture and will likely crack.
If you want to do something in the yard with no chance of anyone "seeing", consider a structure with solid sides or vegetation along the fence. Sounds like the issue of "privacy" is more important than the type of wood; more info might help.
But if they were kiln dried & stapled on tight together, they would all pop off the first time it rained. I suspect they attach them green so shrinkage only causes gaps and subsequent swelling will not destroy the fence.
And the other reason I was suspicious was that when I called them looking for pickets for my fence, they were out of business already.
But you've convinced me that pickets shrink.
I'll admit, you can't stand 5 feet away and see in the fence, but you can go up to it almost anywhere and look in. It seems to defeat the idea of privacy. Although only natural wood fences are allowed here.
Thanks. I guess full privacy was never possible, at least here, since the people in the next house can look out their second floor window and see what's going on.
But I would think the two designs you suggest woudl be more popular. I don't remember seeing them advertised.
My fence was made, 30 years ago, with galvanized nails, and I still use them when I replace pickets.
But this fence I'm disassembling was made with thinner nails, thinner than the refill of a cheap ballpoint pen, but with spiral flutes (what do you call that?) So the nail turns when nailed in, but is much harder to get out. I removed quite a few nails without damaging them, so I'm going to try them, and if I like them I'll try to buy some.
Have you ever seen such nails for sale. What are they called???
BTW, I can't find new pickets for sale -- I asked about that here once and tried your suggestions, but no joy. I've tried the internet, and shopped for pickets when visiting my brother in Dallas - but I found a guy replacing his fence, and he's selling me all the used pickets I want for 10 cents a piece. He has maybe 1000 but I only want 120 to
200 (plus the 80 new pickets I still have.) Actually, I've only seen him once. He's replacing the fence himself and he puts 2 sections of fence outside of his fence, facing the unsold home my good friend used to live in, and I go there and take apart the sections and clean up, so I'm saving him work. So far I owe him about $12.00 for 120 pickets. I think there are 33 to a section but 3 or 4 will be clearly bad, probably break while I'm taking them off. Almost all the rest look fine. I also have untreated pickets that are still fine after
30 years, if they get enough sun during the day.
(And if I trimmed the bottoms off so termites don't get in from the bottom. An exterminator's wife explained this to me. I went to their house to hire him, and while she held the baby, she said you don't want to use these terrible poisons if you don't have to. Just cut off the bottom of the pickets an inch or two above the grass, so that even when the grass needs mowing, the termites won't get in, and you won't neeed poison. Termites don't like to come out in the light, and they have short legs so they can't jump. So if they can't step on the picket from a blade of grass, they won't go.)
BTW, my 6x12 deck was also 30 years old and needed replacing for two years or more. When I wwnt to do it earlier this summer, the first 4 feet + pulled off by hand, but the part under my 2 foot overhang were still nailed in well, and the 2x6's weren't rotting that far back.
In other words, even though both parts of the deck were outside, the part that got rained on more really aged a lot faster. Maybe that shouldnt' surprise me but it did.
So I just put posts in closer to the house, cut off 4.5 feet, put on a new fascia board and now I have a work bench instead of a deck. I never used the deck anyhow, and now I have more lawn, in my little townhouse lot. (6780 sq. ft. counting where the house is.)
Cool. Build it right and it lasts a long time (Sometimes build it wrong and it lasts a long time, too. but longer if you do it right. )
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