How precisely does the customer need to measure the running metres?

Roughly is enough. For the order of magnitude it is enough to walk the line once and estimate the metres, or to take them section by section with a tape; two metres out of forty change nothing about the price frame. The binding quantity only comes from measuring on site anyway. More important than precision is that the customer actually walks the run: doing so reveals corners, gates and junctions that nobody sees from the window.

Does the fence stand on the boundary or beside it?

In Lower Saxony the enclosure is as a rule erected on one's own land, with the side posts facing one's own property (Lower Saxony Neighbour Law Act). A customary enclosure may sit on the boundary where both neighbours are obliged to enclose and neither wants to take the whole structure onto their own land. The distinction matters for the enquiry because it decides access, excavation and the question of who places the order.

Why does a gate cost so much more than a metre of fence?

Because several components come together in a gate: heavier posts with deeper footings, a moving element with fittings, a level or lowered gate area, and frequently a drive with its supply and safety technology. Power-operated gates carry their own requirements for safety in use (DIN EN 12453) and for the product itself (DIN EN 13241). That is why the gate belongs in an item of its own in the quote and in a section of its own on the website.

What does a fence cost per running metre?

A dependable figure only emerges from material, height, ground and gate — that is, from the same four figures the form asks for. It can still be set out on the website: with ranges per material, with a note on what drives the price per metre up (rock, sloping ground, non-standard heights, powered gates), and with an example project including its metre figure. That is more reliable than no figure at all and protects both sides from a false expectation.

Is a page of its own worth it for fencing and screening?

As a rule yes, because the search is very specific: people look for screening, twin-wire fencing, gabions or hedges, rarely for landscaping. A page of its own catches those terms, orders material, height and gate, and leads into a form that asks for the metre figure. The effort is one page plus a gallery category and a form branch — considerably less than three phone calls per enquiry cost over a full season.

Fencing and Screening: Turning Metres Into Enquiries

Q: How high may screening at the property boundary be?

That depends on state law and local building law. In Lower Saxony, enclosures no higher than 2.00 metres above ground level are as a rule exempt from approval (Lower Saxony Building Code); in the outer zone this applies only as an ancillary structure to a building with habitable rooms no more than 50 metres away. Independently of that, neighbour law may require a customary enclosure, and a development plan or design statute may set tighter rules. In case of doubt the local building authority can advise.

A fencing enquiry usually arrives as a single sentence: "We need some screening towards the neighbour, what would that cost?" It contains none of what drives the price — how many running metres, how high, on what ground, with or without a gate. The contractor calls back, asks, finds a slot, drives out, measures, calculates and sends a quote that the customer then compares with two others offering something entirely different. Yet fencing and screening has a pricing structure other trades would envy: the running metre is the unit, and nearly every item hangs off it. That is precisely why it pays to collect the load-bearing figures before the site visit rather than after. This article shows which four figures carry a fencing quote, how material, height and gate can be settled in advance on a service page of its own, which legal frame a customer should know about — and what an enquiry form looks like that asks for running metres, height, ground and access before anyone gets in the van.

Key takeaways

The running metre is the unit nearly every item in fencing hangs off. Without a metre figure in the enquiry, any price statement stays an estimate — and estimates given on the phone are typically remembered as commitments.
Four figures carry a fencing quote: running metres, the height wanted, the ground along the line, and the gate with or without a drive. Everything else can wait for the site visit; these four cannot.
Material, height and gate are the three decisions the customer has to make anyway. A service page of its own orders them instead of explaining them for the third time on a first phone call.
The legal frame is state law. In Lower Saxony the Neighbour Law Act governs the customary enclosure and the Building Code the height that stays exempt from approval. A website can set out that frame, but it does not replace a check of the individual case.
A gallery category for fencing lives on shots taken along the line: the run, the junction with wall and house, the gate, the ground. A frontal photo of a single fence panel shows a product, not workmanship.

Why a fencing enquiry without running metres stays guesswork

In fencing and screening nearly every item hangs off the running metre: posts, panels, footings, screening strips, installation. That makes costing comparatively clean — provided the metre figure exists. Yet the typical enquiry arrives without a single number. "Screening towards the neighbour" carries neither length nor height nor any hint of whether an auger, an excavator or a rotary hammer will be needed. All the contractor can answer with is a range, and ranges are rarely remembered as ranges. So the enquiry begins by creating expectations on both sides that nobody has checked.

The demand itself is spread widely. Around 83 percent (Federal Statistical Office) of residential buildings in Germany are one- or two-family houses, and every one of them has a boundary where a decision comes due sooner or later: enclose it, replace it, raise it, make it opaque. Unlike a terrace or a pond, the trigger is rarely a wish to design something; it is usually a concrete irritation — being overlooked from next door, a dog, a new road, a fence that has rusted through after thirty years. Such enquiries are urgent and price-sensitive at the same time, and they frequently come in threes: the customer asks three contractors.

Without figures the familiar sequence follows: call back, ask, find a slot, drive out, measure, calculate. Two weeks and half a day of driving pass before the quote exists — and in the end the customer compares three quotes with different heights, different post spacing and different footings, which is why they are not comparable at all. Collecting the four load-bearing figures in the form moves that effort forward and lets you say what order of magnitude the project sits in before the site visit. How such a form is built in principle is covered in the article on an enquiry form that qualifies; how to present an item that needs explaining is shown in the article on explaining paving work.

The four figures that carry a fencing quote

Not every detail has to be known up front. Colour, post caps, gate handle and intercom can be settled at the kitchen table without shifting the price frame. Four figures, by contrast, decide the order of magnitude, and without them any number is a guess. The advantage: the customer can supply all four without understanding anything about fencing — provided the form asks for them in their language and not in the language of a bill of quantities.

Running metres instead of gut feel

The length of the line, roughly measured, is enough for the order of magnitude. A tape, a folding rule or even counted paces produce a usable number. More important than precision is that the customer walks the line once: doing so reveals corners, gates and junctions with house and wall that go unnoticed from the window.

The height wanted at the boundary

Height determines post length, footing depth and material price in one go. It is also where the legal frame bites: in Lower Saxony, enclosures no higher than 2.00 metres (Lower Saxony Building Code) above ground level are as a rule exempt from approval.

The ground along the line

Undisturbed soil, rock, rubble, an existing wall or a services trench: the ground decides whether posts are drilled, concreted or bolted down. It is the most common cause of variations and at the same time the figure least often mentioned in first contact.

Access, gate and drive

A gate is the most expensive item per metre and brings its own questions: swing or sliding, clear opening width, falls in the gate area, power for a drive. On top of that comes the plain question of whether the van with the material can reach the line at all.

These four figures fit into four form fields. They do not replace the site visit — measuring still happens on site, and the binding quantity comes from that measure — but they decide whether the site visit happens at all and how well prepared it is. How quantities turn into a bill of quantities in which the customer recognises their own site is shown in the article on a quote that gets accepted.

Material: four ways to close a boundary

Customers rarely phrase their wish as a material; they phrase it as an effect: opaque, low-maintenance, "not so bulky", "it should go green". The material follows from that effect, and with the material come footing, price per metre and upkeep. A service page that sets four routes side by side therefore saves the first phone call: the enquirer arrives with a direction already chosen — and knows the contractor builds more than one kind of fence.

Material	What it stands for	What to settle in advance
Twin-wire mesh, galvanised or coated	Durable enclosure with little upkeep, available in standard heights	Height, post length, screening strips yes or no, footing per post
Timber: louvre fence, woven fence, trellis	Warm character, adapts well to ground and existing structures	Timber species, treatment, expected service life, junction with wall and ground
Gabion with stone fill	Solid visual and noise screening with high dead load	Footing, stone type and grading, basket width, topping up after settlement
Planting: hedge or screening planting	Grows into the job and changes over the years	Boundary distance, spacing, mature height, cutting window, care in the first years
Existing wall with a top section	Uses what is there and saves footing and price per metre	Condition and load capacity, fixing into the existing structure, total height of wall plus top

Planting sits apart because it brings a time window of its own: between 1 March and 30 September (Federal Nature Conservation Act) hedges and living fences may not be cut back or coppiced; gentle shaping and maintenance cuts remain permitted. Planting also has its own boundary distances under the Lower Saxony Neighbour Law Act, which increase with mature height. What that means for scheduling is set out in the article on tree protection and felling seasons. Anyone who also wants to unseal the boundary strip or rebuild the front garden will find the matching link in the article on unsealing as an enquiry driver.

Height, boundary line and the customary enclosure

The legal frame for enclosures is state law and comes in two layers: the neighbour law of the state and building regulation law. In Lower Saxony the Neighbour Law Act starts from local custom. If the owners have agreed nothing, a neighbour can demand an enclosure of the kind customary in that part of the locality. Where no such custom can be established for a district, a fence up to 1.20 metres (Lower Saxony Neighbour Law Act) high can be demanded. The act does not prescribe a particular type of fence: what is customary follows from the neighbourhood, not from a catalogue.

The second question is where the line sits. Under the Lower Saxony Neighbour Law Act the enclosure is as a rule erected on one's own land, and the side posts should face one's own property. A customary enclosure may sit on the boundary itself where both neighbours are obliged to enclose and neither wants to take the whole structure onto their own land (Lower Saxony Neighbour Law Act); separate rules then apply to costs and later upkeep. For the contractor this is not a legal nicety but a question of quantities: whether the posts stand ten centimetres inside the boundary or on it decides excavation, access — and who signs at the end.

In building regulation terms the position in Lower Saxony is comparatively clear. Enclosures no higher than 2.00 metres (Lower Saxony Building Code) above ground level are exempt from approval; in the outer zone this applies only as an ancillary structure to a building with habitable rooms no more than 50 metres (Lower Saxony Building Code) away. Retaining walls stay exempt up to 1.50 metres (Lower Saxony Building Code) — relevant as soon as the line runs across a slope and a base course is added. Exempt from approval does not mean exempt from rules, though: the provisions of the local development plan, local building rules and design statutes still apply, and in other federal states the thresholds sit elsewhere.

Orientation, not legal advice

The provisions named here set out the frame; they do not replace a check of the individual case. Neighbour law is state law, development plans and design statutes are local, and in many states a conciliation procedure is required before a lawsuit. A service page therefore needs one clear sentence: we build to the rules that apply to your plot — and which those are is for the local building authority or legal advice to confirm.

For the website this yields a simple principle: the contractor explains the frame but promises no ruling. A short section titled "What to settle before we build" with three points — local custom, height, where the line sits — takes uncertainty off the customer and follow-up questions off the contractor. Where the line between advice and commitment runs, and which periods start after handover, is set out in the article on warranty in landscaping.

Ground: what decides the price below the surface

Ground is the item hardest to pin down in a quote and the most frequent source of variations. Between a post hole in undisturbed sandy soil and a bore into solid rock lies a multiple in time, and both can occur along the same twenty metres. Because the customer does not know that difference and does not need to, the enquiry should ask for it in their language: not as a soil class, but as an observation from their own garden.

What stands along the line today: an old fence, a hedge, a wall, or nothing?
What is the soil like when you dig in the garden: sandy, loamy, stony, or barely penetrable?
Is there a slope, a step or an embankment along the run?
Are there services, a drain or a soakaway in the ground there?
Should an existing base course or wall carry on being used?
Has anything been filled, backfilled or built on in recent years?

These six questions are answerable for the customer, and they spare the contractor the least pleasant kind of variation: the one that only shows up with the machine running. If something does come up anyway — and in groundwork something frequently does — the approval belongs before the work, not after. How to handle that cleanly is shown in the article on handling variations properly. On the service page an honest sentence is enough: the ground is checked at the site visit, and if it differs from the assumption we talk about it before anything is drilled.

The gate is the most expensive component on the run

A metre of gate costs a multiple of a metre of fence, and with a drive a second trade logic joins in: electrics, safety technology, documentation. That is exactly why the gate belongs in a section of its own on the service page and in an item of its own in the quote. Customers regularly underestimate it because they see the gate as part of the fence — until the price sits next to it and the question comes as to why three metres cost as much as twenty.

Swing or sliding. A swing gate needs room to open and a level gate area, a sliding gate needs a run alongside the opening. The ground decides that more often than taste does.
Clear opening width. It is measured between the posts, not between their centre lines. Ten centimetres decide whether the trailer fits through.
Falls in the gate area. A swing gate opening uphill needs ground clearance — and that costs, at the bottom, exactly the opacity the run was built for.
Power for the drive. Laying the supply to the gate post afterwards means digging up half the driveway. That question belongs in the form, not on site.
Safety for power-operated gates. Gates with a drive carry their own requirements: safety in use is covered by a European standard (DIN EN 12453), the product itself by the gates standard (DIN EN 13241).
Recurring inspection. In workplaces, power-operated doors and gates should be inspected at least once a year (ASR A1.7). For commercial customers that is an argument for a maintenance contract, for private customers a recommendation.

The power supply belongs in the enquiry

Ask in the form whether power is available at the planned gate position or whether a supply would have to be laid. That single question decides trench metres, a second appointment and sometimes whether a drive makes sense at all. It costs the customer five seconds and can save the contractor half a working day.

The service page that answers first

For many landscaping firms fencing and screening is a load-bearing part of the business — on the website it often appears only as a subordinate clause under "other services". That is wasted, because the search is very specific: people look for screening, twin-wire fencing, gabions or hedges, not for landscaping. A page of its own catches that search and answers in one pass what otherwise takes three phone calls.

Step 1

Show the line, not the product

The opening shows a completed run in context: start, corner, gate, junction with the house. Below it, one sentence says which materials the firm installs and what radius it works in. That is the information search engines and enquirers both need.

This structure is not a fencing peculiarity — it carries for any trade the customer does not think of in square metres. The same logic runs through the article on irrigation as a service of its own, and for the second surface on the house the article on green roofs and living walls shows how an add-on becomes a page of its own. How such a page fits into a website can be seen on our page for fencing and screening; the scope of each building block is listed under services.

Three decisions the customer makes anyway

Material, height and gate stand at the start of every fencing project. The only question is whether the customer makes them alone, with a leaflet from a DIY store, or on your page with your arguments. A service page that orders these three decisions does not sell louder, it sells earlier.

The gallery: shots taken along the line

Fence photos are the sore point. Almost every firm has pictures, and almost all of them show the same thing: a fence panel, frontal, at midday, against the sky. That is a product shot — it shows what the manufacturer supplies, not what the firm achieved. Workmanship becomes visible where the line does something: at the corner, on the slope, at the junction with the house wall, at the gate. Hardly anyone photographs those places, and they are exactly what separates a carefully set fence from a quickly set one.

Show the run. A shot along the line, taken low, makes alignment and post spacing visible. It is the strongest picture a fencing contractor can take.
Photograph the junctions. The connection to a wall, house or existing fence, a change of height, the stepping on a slope: this is where quality shows.
Show the gate on its own. Closed and open, with the clear opening visible. If you fit a drive, show the post with its supply as well — that is an argument, not a detail.
Before and after from the same spot. Same viewpoint, same focal length, light as similar as possible. On a line this works even better than on a surface.
Sort by material. Twin-wire mesh, timber, gabion, planting: people search by material. A fencing gallery category with four subgroups leads to the right example faster than a mixed stream of pictures.

How to build a gallery sorted by trade that still stays readable is described in the article on building a portfolio gallery; the matching page on this site is our portfolio gallery for landscaping firms. So the pictures still carry next season, the article on site photos is worth a look. And because fence pictures with long lines come out large: the target for the largest visible element on a page is 2.5 seconds (Google documentation) — image sizes and formats therefore belong before publication, not after.

The enquiry form for fencing projects

A form for fencing enquiries looks different from a general contact form. It asks for two numbers and four selections and leaves everything else out. The temptation to add one more field is strong and typically expensive: an average checkout contained around 11 form fields (Baymard Institute) in 2024 although eight (Baymard Institute) would do. The same holds for an enquiry — every additional mandatory field costs completions without improving the quality of the enquiry.

fencing-enquiry.json

{
  "form": "fencing-enquiry",
  "fields": [
    { "name": "metres",   "type": "number", "required": true,
      "label": "How long is the line? An estimate in metres is enough" },
    { "name": "height",   "type": "select", "required": false,
      "label": "What height would you like?",
      "options": ["up to 1.20 m", "1.20 to 1.60 m", "1.60 to 2.00 m", "higher", "not sure yet"] },
    { "name": "material", "type": "select", "required": false,
      "label": "What should close the boundary?",
      "options": ["welded mesh panel", "timber", "gabion", "planting", "still open"] },
    { "name": "ground",   "type": "select", "required": false,
      "label": "What is the ground like along the line?",
      "options": ["undisturbed soil", "stony or rock", "existing wall", "not sure"] },
    { "name": "gate",     "type": "text",   "required": false,
      "label": "How many gates, and how wide should they be?" },
    { "name": "power",    "type": "select", "required": false,
      "label": "Is there a power supply at the planned gate position?",
      "options": ["yes", "no", "not sure"] },
    { "name": "postcode", "type": "text",   "required": true,
      "label": "Postcode of the property" }
  ]
}

Seven fields, two of them mandatory: metres and postcode. Everything else may be "not sure" — that answer is information in itself, because it prepares the site visit. Asking the customer for two photos of the line on top of that typically saves the most driving time: one picture of the run and one of the planned gate area answer more than three follow-up questions. The finished enquiry form for landscaping, with its trade routing, is on our page for the landscaping enquiry form.

Common mistakes on fencing pages

The following points come up regularly when reviewing landscaping websites. None of them is a glaring error, yet each on its own means a very specific search fails to turn into a usable enquiry.

Fencing as a subordinate clause. If the trade appears only in a list under "other services", a search for "screening" will not find the page.
Only one material shown. Showing nothing but twin-wire mesh loses the customers who have a hedge or a gabion in mind — even though the firm builds both.
No orders of magnitude at all. With no reference point a share of enquirers do not call at all; others call and are surprised by the quote.
The legal frame is missing or reads like a ruling. Both do damage: either the uncertainty remains, or the firm stands behind a statement it does not owe.
Not a word about the gate. The most expensive item on the run appears on many pages not at all and then lands in the quote.
A form with no metre field. A general contact form for a trade that calculates in metres gives away the most important figure in the first step.

Fixing these six points does not make the fencing page prettier, it makes it more usable. How to state orders of magnitude without committing prematurely is set out in the article on showing prices on your website; which pictures go with that is shown in the article on before-and-after shots.

Sources and Studies

This article draws on data from the Lower Saxony Neighbour Law Act, the Lower Saxony Building Code, the Federal Nature Conservation Act and the Federal Statistical Office, as well as on figures from the Baymard Institute, the standards DIN EN 12453 and DIN EN 13241, the Technical Rules for Workplaces (ASR A1.7) and Google documentation. The figures quoted refer to the state of the respective publication. Supplemented by project experience from website projects for landscaping firms in the Hildesheim, Hannover and Braunschweig area. The legal notes are general in nature and do not replace a check of the individual case.