What to charge for fence installation
Price a fence by the foot. Add up the feet of every run, count the posts those feet take, and work out what the materials and the hours cost you. A price above that, divided by the feet, is your price for a foot. Gates and tearing out an old fence are priced apart.
By TailGateBid. .
The part of a fence that repeats
A price for a foot works for the part of a fence that repeats: rails, pickets, panels or wire, with a post every so often. It does not fit the parts that come once: a gate, a fence that has to come out first, a haul.
So this page prices the repeating part by the foot, and takes the rest out of that price and onto the quote as lines of their own. Then a foot costs the same on a long fence as on a short one, and the extras are paid for by the customers who have them.
From the runs to the posts
- Walk the line with a tape or a wheel. Write each straight run down by itself, in feet, and skip the gate openings. Added up, the runs are the size of the job.
- Posts come next. A run divided by your post spacing, rounded up, is the number of sections in it. Add up the sections of every run, then add one post to close the line and one more for every gate.
- No spacing is given here. We looked for one at a source worth quoting and the only guide we found names no author, so the spacing is yours to type.
- A post is longer than the fence is tall. In QUIKRETE's guide to setting posts the hole is 3 times the width of the post, and as deep as a third to a half of the post's height above ground: for a 6 foot fence, a hole of at least 2 feet. Buy the post for the fence and the hole together.
- Cost the posts by the post and everything else by the foot. Rails, pickets, panels and wire grow with the feet. Posts and concrete grow with the count.
Work out what a job costs you
Start with the fence line
Type the feet of each straight run, measured without the gate openings. The boxes add them up, count the posts once you say how far apart you set them, and put the feet in the calculator below. A new box opens when the last one is filled.
Your own spacing. It starts empty: we found no source worth quoting for one.
Each gate adds a post. The gate itself is a line of its own on the quote.
The post and its concrete. It is counted once your spacing is typed, because the posts have to be counted first.
Rails and pickets, panels or wire, and the fasteners. Take what you pay for all of it and divide by the feet.
Type the feet of the first run. The total shows here.
Two people for a day of 8 hours is 16.
A rental, dump fees, a sub.
Type the size of the job to see a price for each foot.
If you want it checked. Leave it empty if not.
Type your hours and what an hour costs you, or your materials. The answer shows here.
Three sides of a yard, worked through
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
Say a back yard takes a fence down one side, across the back and up the other: runs of 60, 40 and 60 feet, 160 feet in all, with 1 gate. Say you set a post every 8 feet: 21 sections and 23 posts. Say a post costs you $22 in the ground and the rest of the materials come to $9.50 a foot, both made-up prices: $506 of posts and $1,520 by the foot, $2,026 together. Say the build takes 32 hours of work at $57.05 an hour, which is $1,825.60. The fence costs you $3,851.60. Charge $5,503 and you keep $1,651.40, which is $30 of every $100. That is $34.40 a foot, before the gate.
The same fence at five prices
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
| Price | You keep | Of every $100 |
|---|---|---|
| $4,280 | $428.40 | $10 |
| $4,815 | $963.40 | $20 |
| $5,503 | $1,651.40 | $30 |
| $6,420 | $2,568.40 | $40 |
| $7,704 | $3,852.40 | $50 |
The hours are the part nobody can look up
The boxes count posts and add up feet. They do not say how long a fence takes to build. We found no figure for that at a source worth naming, and the kind of fence, the ground and the crew are all yours.
After each fence, write down the feet, the posts and the hours. Hours divided by feet is what a foot takes you. A few fences in, that figure is the one to price the next one from.
What a price for a foot leaves out
- Gates. A gate is hardware, a frame and the time to hang it, and it takes a post on each side. Count its posts in the boxes and put the gate itself on the quote as its own line, so a foot stays a foot.
- The old fence. Taking one down and hauling it off is hours and a load. Price it apart, or say on the quote that it is not included.
- The days before you dig. 811 is the free national before-you-dig service. It says to contact it a few business days before any digging, fence installation included, and then to wait a few days for the utilities to answer: Common Ground Alliance, 811 Before You Dig. Leave room for those days in the date you promise.
- The wait on the concrete. With its fast-setting mix, QUIKRETE says to wait about 4 hours before you start building on a post: the same guide. On a short fence that decides whether the job is one trip or two.
- The second trip. Posts one day and rails the next is the drive twice. See what a trip costs you, and count both.
- The ground. Nothing on this page knows what you will be digging in. If the holes on a job are going to be slow, the hours box is where that goes.
The materials are bought before you are paid
Lumber, wire and concrete are money out before the first post is set. A deposit on the quote can cover them: work out the deposit and the sales tax, and check what your state allows before you ask for one.
On a quote
In TailGateBid the fence goes on a quote as lines charged by the foot, with the gate and the tear-out as lines of their own. TailGateBid for fence builders has a whole quote worked through, and shows how two kinds of fence go on one quote as options the customer picks between.
If the hour you price with is still a guess, start there: work out what an hour costs you. The sum on this page, for a job that is not a fence, is the job price calculator.
Where each number comes from
- When this page works out a price for you, it never aims to leave you more than $90 of every $100. TailGateBid's own price suggestions stop at the same place. A price you type yourself can leave more.
- The ladder shows the prices that leave about $10, $20, $30, $40, $50 of every $100. The steps are our choice: a ladder to read across, not advice.
A calculator works from the numbers you type. Check the answer against your own books.
This page is about one kind of job. TailGateBid works for any trade, and Bid Partner is built to price a job in any of them: how it works for your trade.
Sources
Related
- FencingFootage, posts and gates on a quote, and a website to show the finished line.
- What an hour costs youIn the example, $25 an hour of pay turns into $57.05 for every hour you can bill.
- Job price16 hours of work and $600 of materials cost you $1,320. See what five prices would leave you.
- Deposit and sales taxOn a sample quote, 7.25% of $2,035.00 is $147.54 of tax, and a 10% deposit on the total is $225.75.
- Trip and minimum chargeIn the example, a job 25 minutes away costs $93.92 before any work is done. See what your smallest job costs with the trip in it.
On a TailGateBid quote the fence is a line by the foot, and the gate and the old fence are lines of their own.
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