Safety on Site

Before a spade goes in

We ask what is under the line. Water, gas, electricity, drains and any garden cabling to a shed or a light. Homeowners very often know exactly where a supply runs, and that knowledge is free.
We look for the obvious markers. Meter positions, inspection covers, the line a supply is likely to take between the house and an outbuilding, and any reinstated trench in a path.
We dig the first hole carefully rather than driving a post in blind, especially near a wall, a boundary corner or anywhere a service is likely to cross.
If we find something we did not expect, we stop and tell you before we work round it. That includes old foundations, buried concrete, and made ground.

Ground we treat with extra care

Two situations in our patch deserve naming. In Kingswood, the coal mining history means the area sits in a Coal Authority development high risk area, gardens there have been known to open up, and the old Siston Hill Colliery shafts reached around 170 metres. That is not a reason to panic about a fence post, but it is a reason to look at what a hole is going into rather than assuming. And in the Avon and Frome valley bottoms, alluvium and made ground can mean a hole that will not hold its sides, which changes how a post is set rather than whether it can be.

On the job

Spoil and old concrete are contained rather than spread across a lawn, and we lay boards where a barrow has to cross grass.
Cutting is done away from the house where it can be, and never inside a boundary we have taken down while a garden is open to a road.
Where a boundary is down and there are children or animals in either garden, we make the gap safe before we leave for the day, or we do not open it in the first place.
Tools and materials are cleared to one point at the end of each day rather than left along the run.

Working on a shared boundary

If we need to stand in a neighbour's garden, we ask the neighbour, not just you. If we need to take a fence down that turns out to be theirs, we stop. Common law gives you the right to cut back what overhangs your side of a boundary, but it does not give anybody the right to remove a neighbour's structure, and a fencing job is not the place to test that.

Four questions to ask any fencing firm

Can I see your public liability certificate? The document with the dates on it, not a logo. Any hesitation here has answered the question.
Who is actually doing the work? A quote from one firm and a crew from another is common in this trade, and you are entitled to know.
What are you doing about buried services? A firm that has not thought about it before you asked has not thought about it.
Who is taking the waste, and under what registration? Old posts, concrete and timber have to go somewhere legal, and fly tipped waste traced back to your address is your problem.

Ask us the same four. We would rather you did.