Fence Company in Edmond, OK

Three totals are not three prices

Collect three quotes for the same back yard and you will get three different footages, three different assumptions about the old fence, and at least one that quietly leaves out a gate. Comparing the bottom lines at that point tells you almost nothing. The work is to rebuild all three onto one common scope, then see what is left.

Step one: fix the footage yourself

Walk the line with a measuring wheel and write down your own number before you read anybody's. If one bid says 186 feet and another says 212, one of them is including the section along the neighbor's side that you were not planning to replace, or one of them measured to a survey pin and the other to the existing posts. Sort that out first, because a per foot comparison built on the wrong length stays wrong all the way to the total.

Step two: list what each quote does not say

Pull the same set of items out of each document. If a bid is silent on one, treat it as excluded and go ask.

• Removal of the existing fence and disposal of the debris
• Hole depth and diameter, and whether every post is set in concrete or only the corners and gate posts
• Post material and spacing, since eight foot spacing on posts holds up differently in spring wind than six
• Number of gates, their widths, and the grade of hinges and latches
• Sprinkler and utility damage: who repairs a cut line, and at whose cost
• Grading, cleanup, and whether spoil from the holes is hauled or spread in the yard

Step three: adjust, do not discount

Add the missing items back at a fair market number rather than mentally forgiving the low bid for leaving them out. If Bid A includes demolition at 900 dollars and Bid B is silent on it, Bid B is not 900 dollars cheaper, it is unpriced. Once every quote carries the same eleven or twelve items, divide by your own footage and look at the adjusted cost per foot. That figure is comparable. The original totals were not.

What is left over is judgment

After normalising, real spread usually comes from a few places: heavier posts, deeper holes, better hardware, a longer workmanship warranty, and how much of the crew is employed rather than picked up for the week. Around here the depth question carries the most weight, because clay that swells and shrinks through a hot dry August will find any post that was not set far enough down. A bid that is 12 percent higher and buys six more inches of hole is not the expensive one over ten years.

Keep the three normalised sheets. If a change order shows up later, the sheet is what you compare it against.

Why a deposit exists at all

Material gets bought before labor gets performed. Cedar, steel posts, concrete and gate hardware are ordered against your job, and on a cedar order that has to come in from a yard rather than off the rack, that money is spent whether the job proceeds or not. A deposit that roughly matches the material package is normal. A deposit that also covers the crew's wages for work nobody has done yet is not.

Schedules that hold up

Two shapes cover most residential work in this area.

• Half at material delivery, half at completion. Fine for a job that runs two or three days.
• Thirds: at signing, when posts are set and cured, and at the final walk. Better on anything with drive gates, retaining work or more than about 300 feet.

Tie each payment to a milestone you can stand in the yard and verify, never to a calendar date. Spring here loses days to storms and to ground too wet to auger, and a date based schedule quietly puts that weather risk on you. Holding back the last portion until the final walk is standard and no reputable outfit is offended by it.

Change orders: settle the unit price in advance

Almost every change on a fence job falls into a short list, and every item on that list can be priced before anyone digs.

Extra linear feet beyond the measured run	price per foot
An additional gate or a widened opening	price per gate by width
A hole that will not auger through shale	price per hole
Removing a stump or an old concrete footing in the line	price each
Repairing an irrigation line that was not marked	hourly plus parts

With those five numbers agreed on the contract, a mid job surprise becomes arithmetic. Without them, it becomes a negotiation held while your yard is open and the crew is standing there, which is the worst possible moment to be discovering what something costs.

Put it in writing before the work happens

A change order should name the item, the quantity, the agreed unit price, the new total, and any effect on the finish date. Both parties sign it, and it happens before the extra work, not on the invoice afterward. Text messages count if they carry those five things, so a photo of the obstruction with a short reply agreeing to the per hole rate is a perfectly good record.

The last payment

Walk the whole line before you release it. Check that gates swing and latch without being lifted, that no post is out of plumb, that caps are on and hardware is tight, and that the spoil and offcuts are gone. Ask for a receipt marked paid in full and, on larger jobs, a lien waiver. That last document costs nothing and closes the file.

What is under an Edmond yard

Red clay on top, and then it varies by neighborhood and sometimes by property line. Sandstone and shale sit close to the surface across a good deal of the area, and in the older parts of town you will also find hardpan, chunks of the previous fence's footings, driveway spoil that a builder buried in 1978, and the occasional slab of the porch that used to be there. Any of it will stop an auger.

What refusal actually looks like

The bit stops advancing and the machine starts wanting to climb out of the hole instead. On a two man auger, the operator feels it immediately. On a skid mounted unit, the giveaway is the hole going from a two minute job to a fifteen minute one. Genuine refusal is not the same as a dull or wrong bit, and it is worth asking which one you are looking at, because a crew that has been running the same worn teeth all week will hit rock more often than the geology explains.

The ways out, cheapest first

• Move the post. Shifting a hole eight or ten inches along the line often clears the obstruction entirely and costs nothing but a slightly uneven bay.
• Rock auger or a carbide toothed bit, which handles softer shale and weathered sandstone without special equipment.
• Hand work with a breaker or a rock bar, slow but reliable on a single stubborn hole.
• A hydraulic breaker on the machine, which is a rental line and shows up as a real cost.
• Core drilling and epoxy setting the post into solid rock, used when the obstruction is a buried slab rather than something to be broken up.

How the cost should be handled

Three arrangements are common, and all three are fine as long as one of them is written down before the first hole. A per hole rock charge, quoted in the contract, so the number is known. An hourly rate for breaking, with the crew logging the time. Or an allowance built into the price, a set figure that covers a stated number of difficult holes, refunded if unused. What you do not want is silence, because silence turns into a verbal estimate delivered while your yard is torn open.

The opposite problem

Not every hard hole is rock. In newer additions the trouble is often loose engineered fill, which augers beautifully and then holds a post about as well as a bucket of sand. That situation calls for a deeper or wider hole and more concrete, and it costs money in exactly the same way. Ask how the crew handles both ends of that range, because a fence line can easily run through shale at one corner and soft fill at the other.