# Forum Home Renovation Fences & Screens  A 'screen' fence - fixings suggestions needed to offset vertical timber palings

## SWQ

G'day, 
Looking for suggestions at how best to build a side-boundary "privacy-fence" in which the vertical timber palings are not attached flat to the fence rails, but rather are off-set (from the fence line) by somewhere between 30 and 60 degrees. Note: "vertical palings" - not diagonal palings and not horizontal slats - though fixing options for fixed-louvred horizontals might apply. 
This concept is to provide our neighbours with more privacy, whilst creating less obstruction to our light, view and cross-ventilation. Sort of a fence as a one-way privacy screen. 
Looking straight down from above, this is a schematic view of the fence - with fence-rail (upper line) and palings (back-slashes) :- 
Type A:-
______________________
\  \  \  \  \  \  \  \  \  \  \  \ \  \  \ \  \  
Timber paling height will be around 1500mm to 1800mm. Cost allowing I'd use sustainable Blackbutt - but more than likely I'll end up with treated pine. 
Best solutions or fixings??? 
Birdmouth cuts to turn timber railing into a sawtooth and then nailgun palings on to it?
Weld pieces of angle onto 40mm Gal SHS rails?
Cut up 60deg wedges, pre-drill and screw on each paling fixing?   
So, why the effort? Our main sitting room is at the front of our house, so the windows of our living space (1.5m from fence line) are a bit too much into their yard. Also our block is about 400mm lower than theirs which means a full fence at 1.8m height would significantly limit both our natural light and our cross-ventilation.  
For those still with me this far, I'd also wondered about building it so that noone get the ugly side - although probably better or simpler to intersperse the rail and slat side for a section from each post - every 2.4m or 3m:- 
Type B 
\     \     \     \     \     \     \
--------------------------------
    \     \     \     \     \     \

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## David.Elliott

I'm not sure why there is a fixation with ugly or nice sides of a fence... The job it does is so much more important than how it looks...so take the rail side and put something on it!

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## toooldforthis

I'd be thinking sawtooth a 2nd rail attached to the existing rail, then fix palings to that.
reason being I suspect you will need a decent sized birdmouth for the palings and you dont want to weaken the rail too much. 
I'd take the nice side if you are paying for it  :Smilie: 
of course they might be tempted to then put something on the ugly side thereby undoing all your work/plans.
maybe have the nice face where it is important to you and nice face for neighbour where important to them (hopefully different areas)

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## SWQ

Thanks for these responses. I've been thinking a lot on this - and wondering if there is a viable way to achieve what we need... 
I agree sawtooth would work best as an attached second rail - however it would require a very wide rail...  
Idea that I'm trying to land now is a system with palings suspended on laced galvanised cable. This would require wider posts with three pairs of galvanised cable (top, centre and bottom - think Hills hoist wire) laced like a shoe through twin holes in each paling. To keep the palings at the correct angle they would need multiple sections of thin rigid pipe - with angle cuts. Not sure if viable and what materials to use though - cable would need to be pulled tight and thus both the palings and this thin pipe need to be rigid enough to resist bowing from the pressure of the cable. Any thoughts?

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## Marc

If the issue is privacy inside your house, why fence the whole lot?
Just build the same idea of slats on a diagonal this time in front of your window. YOu can either make a larger panel self supporting in front of the window at a distance at your discretion or mount a frame on the wall, screening just the window. Easier and cheaper than doing the whole fence line. 
Many more ideas if you google privacy fencing, privacy screening etc. Even a canvas awning coming down at 45 in front of your window would do the job.

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## SWQ

Thx. The request to increase the fence height for reasons of privacy is from my neighbours. The proposal was also to increase the length to bring it all the way to the front corner of our house. 
Both houses are brick on ground-level slabs. The ground level on our lot is between 200mm and 300mm below theirs. The current fence is just 600mm height wire link fence that extends from back corner up to roughly about halfway up the side between our lots.  
The windows of OUR living space and bedrooms are quite close to side  boundary but we happily manage our privacy through venetians - thus we  are happy with current open system that allows cross ventilation and  daylight. 
Our bedrooms are at rear - and our open-plan living  area is the front half of our house where there is currently no fencing  at all. I empathise with their desire for greater privacy, given that with our windows open  in summer, they can't even walk out to their car without hearing what's  on our TV nor have a sense that whoever is sitting by the lounge-room  window of our house isn't party to any drive-way or front-door  conversations just four or five uninterrupted metres away in our quiet  neighbourhood. However for us, these two side-windows up front in our  open-plan living area not only provide daylight and cross-ventilation , but also our outlook down our street to the tree-tops of the gums along  the bank of the Brisbane River - 120m away.  
The neighbours broached this topic - offering to pay for a  new basic 1800mm wooden paling fence - probably built in part via use of the current 600mm round gal steels posts as no need to replace  these existing footings. We are fortunate to have good neighbours on  every side and work to maintain that state. We replied we would certainly chip into costs, but offered our  perspectives desirous of a fencing solution that wouldn't excessively impact our daylight to all windows, and (especially for the two windows in our home's open-plan living area) the cross-ventilation and view. This was some time back and since then the  conversation has stalled - or been placed in the too hard basket. The area which most needs the one-way option is in the section of new fence in front of the two side-windows of our open-plan living space.

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