Clôture en PVC

General Discussion
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1

Painting fences?

It’s the fence that surrounds our patio (which is about 60cm above the lawn so does need some sort of boundary demarcation/protection).

Not for the first time am I reminded how much I dislike the fact that whoever built it did so from decking planks - these have a grooved surface which is fine for grip when you have made a deck with them but is a nightmare for painting.

Also nothing seems to stick. The original colour was blue, that shade so beloved of French shutters - so I presume local exterior paint. That was already peeling when we bought the house. Weathershield lasted perhaps two years, rather than the promised 10. Given the expense I switched to some Leyland trade paint - that also lasts about two seasons but at least is not as expensive.

I am now trying some marine grade high VOC primer on the bare wood revealed at the “remove all loose and flaking paint” stage. It has so many warnings about being toxic to aquatic life, releasing explosive and noxious vapours and inducing organ failure if it gets on your skin that I’m half expecting a crack team of environmentalists to turn up and chain themselves to the water butt until I promise to stop using it.

Well, yes. I know that, I suspect that you know that I know that and I did put “smaller” in quotes.

But some people find comparing negative numbers counter-intuitive so I was trying to be explicit about which direction is “better”.

2

Wire brush and powerful jet washer.

3

No jet washer unfortunately and it would soak the bare wood too much.

4

If its not too larger area, replace the boards with composite?

5

T’missus has suggested PVC - I’m open to the idea as spending the best part of a week each year redoing the wood is a bit of a pain.

At the moment I’m caught between cost (need ~ 60m of the stuff - 20m x 3 bars) and how to fix it to the existing posts - removing them from the patio base is not a can of worms I wish to open but replacing the horizontal bars should be relatively painless.

Have just noticed this though - just need to figure out if you can screw them to a wooden fence post.

For now I’m sticking to painting.

6

Fair enough. Wolf Garden do a wire brush head for their multi-tool poles which makes wirebrushing anything at ground level much less painful.

7

Carrying on from the above

Painting this fence is doing my head in - only just got primer on one stretch, rain still forecast tomorrow (but maybe not until the evening if I’m lucky).

Basically I need 4-5 days to do the job and I never seem to get more than 2-3 which always means compromise (and probably contributes to the poor performance of paint so far).

Working on the assumption that removing it and letting people fall off the edge of the patio is not acceptable then my wife’s suggestion is looking more and more attractive (not that I ever disagreed with it) but how?

I want a 3-bar fence, 1m high. 20m in total.

I can’t find how I build this in France. I know it can be done in the general case, were I starting with a blank canvas but there is (what I perceive to be) a snag.

I do not know how the patio is built (and do not really want to have to find out). The house floor level is about 50-60 cm above the ground. There is a raised patio level with the kitchen/lounge French doors. It might, or might not, be original with the house. Probably not. My guess (and that’s all it is) is that it is a concrete block, perhaps with coarse rubble infill in the centre.

That means I do not know if I can put a coach bolt vertically down through the tiles to secure upright posts, nor if I did whether the edge of the patio would be strong enough. The existing posts seem to be anchored by coach bolts driven in horizontally  at the base of each post into the side of the patio (and the posts half cut away to allow this, quarter cut away at the corners of the patio).

I also can tell quite a few tiles have lost their bond with the underlying substrate - I’m more than a bit worried that any attempt to drill through the tiles and insert coach bolts will result in me having to re-tile the thing at least partially.

So, ideally, even though not all are completely solid I would like to re-use the uprights. I’d also like the rails to be about the same size as they are now (just under 100x30mm - 100x30 would do, I think).

As far as I can see there are systems which have posts into which you slot the rails downward (but not sure if any of these have spacers to allow a non sold fence to be formed) or systems where there are upright posts with slots you can introduce a rail horizontally - but neither is quite right for what I’d like to do.

Anyone got ideas, links to suppliers etc?

8

Fixing into questionable substrate a form of chemfix as expansion of any kind will probably break it. Composite deck board, brico depot seem to be lowest cost if only 2 colours. Sloted rails with a spcer dropped between rails?

9

Huh?

Which would be bad :slight_smile:

Got links?

10

Later.

1 Like
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:+1:

12

Perhaps try a different region!!!

13

A slightly expensive solution to exterior decorating problems!!

14

Those PVC posts and rails are fairly flimsy IIRC. You could try drilling vertically and resin bonding threaded bar to fix a (75 mm?) post base. Horizontal rails use treated demi-chevron and make your own uprights from treated 150 x 15 mm volige.

15

The posts for the rails I linked to have a screw base which the upright slots over. Not sure how robust it is normally but one set of holes would be very close to the edge of the patio and I think would risk breaking the edge away.

I’m leaning towards “I could probably just treat these like planks and screw them to the existing uprights” as long as I only put a screw through the central, reinforced part of the rail. Mushroom head screws should do the trick and you can get them (at least in the 'states) finished with white heads (or dip in paint).

But I’m waiting to see what @cornoa comes up with.

16

Resin anchor types, various available according to pull out strength.
2 cartridges of hybrid resin for stone-colored threaded rods - 300 ml - Brico Dépôt https://share.google/R8AmHtIYPTOmxAYMa
(Scellement chimique)

If you can firmly attach a vertical batten and screw through the rails into the batten. Post should be class 3 or 4 timber or of course the metal or composite post. Having a little trouble now back in the UK getting into french sites.

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1 Like
17

Just go natural….you don’t see Nordic homesteaders painting their fences more than once a generation. Modern not always best!

Recette peinture suédoise avec ocre et farine.

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Slightly different weather in nordic environments

1 Like
19

Yes, a lot harsher! They have sun too you know,

20

I know I wotked out there. A lot is down to the quality of the tmber and decking is often the lowest grade and speed grown with an open grain unlike the hardwood version. The better the timber the better the paint will last generally. My shutters are hardwood, mahogany like and the oil based paint is only just coming to the end of its life after 18-20 years of harsh sun and cold