Any in­di­vid­ual who trav­els reg­u­lar­ly to the USA will ob­serve that in many res­i­den­tial ar­eas the front of the home is open to the road. In­deed, in many ar­eas, the home­own­er is pro­hib­it­ed from in­stalling a fence at the front of the prop­er­ty as there is a de­sire to main­tain a cer­tain ap­pear­ance to the en­tire neigh­bour­hood.

This is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent to the sit­u­a­tion in the Caribbean where in the ma­jor­i­ty of neigh­bour­hoods the en­tire prop­er­ty is sur­round­ed by some type of fence with fenc­ing types vary­ing from chain link or wire wall, to brick wall, com­bi­na­tion wall and iron rails, and in some cas­es, gal­vanise sheets. In this se­ries of ar­ti­cles, we will ex­am­ine the use of fenc­ing for res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties.

Pur­pose of fenc­ing

The pri­ma­ry pur­pose of fenc­ing is to clear­ly iden­ti­fy the bound­aries of the prop­er­ty and so be able to clear­ly iden­ti­fy that an in­di­vid­ual is tres­pass­ing. Fences al­so pro­vide a phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal de­ter­rent to peo­ple who are con­tem­plat­ing unau­tho­rised ac­cess on­to the prop­er­ty.

Fenc­ing can al­so have the ef­fect, on cer­tain types of prop­er­ties, of sub­tly sug­gest­ing that with­in these bound­aries cer­tain be­hav­iour is ex­pect­ed. Al­so on cer­tain types of prop­er­ties, fences help di­rect ve­hic­u­lar and pedes­tri­an traf­fic to safer lo­ca­tions that are eas­i­ly ob­served by se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers, pass­ing pedes­tri­ans or ve­hi­cles, and to au­tho­rised points of ingress and egress.

Fence ma­te­r­i­al

The most com­mon­ly used fenc­ing ma­te­r­i­al is chain link fenc­ing as it is sim­ple to in­stall, rel­a­tive­ly in­ex­pen­sive and low in main­te­nance costs. From a se­cu­ri­ty per­spec­tive, the heav­ier the chain link, the bet­ter that the fence stands up to the pas­sage of time and the more the dif­fi­cult it is to cut the fab­ric. The small­er the mesh open­ings the more dif­fi­cult it is for some­one to un­rav­el the fence or climb over the fence.

Where a prop­er­ty is sit­ed in ar­eas that are very close to the sea and so is ex­posed to heavy con­cen­tra­tions of salt laden air (com­mon­ly called sea blast) which caus­es met­al sur­faces to rust very quick­ly, it is rec­om­mend­ed that the fenc­ing should be coat­ed with a polyvinyl chlo­ride resin. The resin is hot ex­trud­ed coat­ed and is up to 22 mils (or .025 inch) thick. This type of coat­ed fence is smooth to the touch and will not rust, so it is ide­al for in­stal­la­tion in ma­rine lo­ca­tions.

Where a fence has been erect­ed for se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons, the ab­solute min­i­mum height should be six feet (not in­clud­ing the top guard). Fences that are of greater height such as nine feet are even bet­ter. At a height of nine feet, the top of the fence is out of stand­ing reach of most in­trud­ers which pro­vides a psy­cho­log­i­cal de­ter­rent, plus in­creas­ing the dif­fi­cul­ty of go­ing over the top of the fence.

Fence in­stal­la­tion

If a fence is im­prop­er­ly in­stalled, there is a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that it will sag and lose its de­ter­rent val­ue. The US Na­tion­al Fire Pro­tec­tion As­so­ci­a­tion–Guide to Premis­es Se­cu­ri­ty pro­vides good guide­lines on fence in­stal­la­tion and we have drawn from those to pro­vide the guide­lines be­low.

For a fence with 7ft-high fab­ric, the posts should be set in con­crete. Line posts should be spaced equidis­tant at in­ter­vals not ex­ceed­ing 10ft when mea­sured from cen­tre to cen­tre be­tween end posts.

A top rail or top ten­sion wire should be pro­vid­ed as sup­port for the fence fab­ric.

A top rail im­proves the ap­pear­ance of the fence, but al­so pro­vides a hand­hold for some­one at­tempt­ing to climb over the fence. For this rea­son, it is usu­al­ly rec­om­mend­ed that the top rail be omit­ted and re­placed with a top ten­sion wire. The top ten­sion wires should be stretched taut free of sag, from end to end of each stretch of fence, at a height with­in 1 ft of the top of the fab­ric, and be se­cure­ly at­tached to the end posts. A bot­tom ten­sion wire should al­so be pro­vid­ed. Some fences can have a bot­tom rail in place of the bot­tom ten­sion wire.

In Part two of this ar­ti­cle, we will con­tin­ue look­ing at fence in­stal­la­tion, while in lat­er parts of this se­ries we will look at the use of top guards for fences and al­ter­na­tive fenc­ing ma­te­r­i­al.

The Caribbean In­sti­tute for Se­cu­ri­ty and Pub­lic Safe­ty of­fers a full range of se­cu­ri­ty, law en­force­ment, OSH/HSE and pub­lic safe­ty cours­es to pri­vate and pub­lic or­gan­i­sa­tions as well as in­di­vid­u­als.

Con­tact us at 223-6999, in­fo@caribbeanse­cu­ri­tyin­sti­tute.com or www.caribbeanse­cu­ri­tyin­sti­tute.com.

Bri­an Ram­sey MBA,

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