San Antonio Expert Fence builds and repairs fences in New Braunfels, from privacy fences on sloping back yards to front fences and gates.
San Antonio Expert Fence plans New Braunfels fences to the city's own code, which has a section written just for fences and walls. It covers how tall a fence can be in the front yard and everywhere else, where a fence can't go at all, and what a business or an apartment complex owes the houses next door. Those rules apply inside the New Braunfels city limits.
New Braunfels grew up around Comal Springs, the largest spring complex in Texas, which rise at the foot of a limestone bluff where the hills begin. That line of hills is the fault line, and plenty of lots in town still climb toward it.
Two things about a lot here can change how a fence gets planned. If your yard slopes, or the fence line runs over a limestone ledge, the way the city measures height matters. If the back of your lot is a drainage easement, the city doesn't allow a fence in it at all. We'll go through both below.
The rules sit in the city's zoning code. Here's how they work out on a house lot.
New Braunfels requires a building permit for fences and walls, and applying for it is part of our job. You may read on a permit lookup website that an ordinary backyard fence here doesn't need one. The city's code says otherwise: "All fences and walls require building permits." The same line includes an engineered foundation when one is necessary, so if the fence or wall you have in mind is that kind of job, we'll tell you before we apply.
In the required front yard, a fence or wall can be up to 36 inches tall. A fence that's at least half open, like an open iron fence, can go to 4½ feet. That front yard is the setback the zoning sets for your lot, which isn't necessarily all the ground in front of the house, so it's the first thing we measure when you want a fence out front.
Past that setback, a fence on a house lot can be up to 8 feet tall. You don't have to wait until the back corners of the house to go tall, either. The code lets a fence run from the front corners of the house through the side yard at full height, so a privacy fence can close in the side of the lot as well as the back.
Where a street corner, an alley or a driveway meets the street, the city keeps a clear triangle so drivers can see. Inside it, the city doesn't allow a wall or other obstruction between 2½ and 7 feet above the street or driveway. That clear band starts lower than the 36 inches a front fence can reach, so on a corner lot or beside a driveway, a fence that meets the front-yard rule can still reach into it. The size of the triangle depends on the kind of street, and we mark it on the ground when we lay out the fence.
In 2024 the city put out a code interpretation on measuring fence height, and it says plainly why: height "can come into question when there is a grade differential" along a fence line. Here that happens where the ground rises toward the hills. A fence line can climb, step over a limestone ledge, or sit higher on your side than on your neighbor's, and post holes can meet limestone on the way. We plan the digging around that once we've seen the line.
In that interpretation, the city said it measures fence height from the lowest ground next to the fence, whether that ground is inside your yard or outside it. On flat ground, that changes nothing. On a slope or a ledge, the height counts from the lower ground, not from where you stand in your own yard.
Picture a yard that's level up by the house, with the ground dropping off along the back line to the lot behind. A fence that stands at the limit on your side is taller than that from your neighbor's side, and measured the city's way, that puts it over the 8-foot limit. So on a line like that, we work out the height from the low side first and set the fence to it. Where the line runs downhill, we can step the panels so each one sits level and the top follows the ground, and we'll show you how it comes out at each end of the yard before anything is ordered.
Here are installed price ranges, at Texas rates, for the fences and gates that go up around a New Braunfels house.
| Item | Typical price | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Pine privacy fence, 6 ft | $19–$39 | per linear foot installed |
| Cedar fence | $15–$42 | per linear foot installed |
| Wood picket fence, 3–4 ft | $15–$29 | per linear foot installed |
| Walk gate | $190–$780 | each, installed |
The city's building permit fee comes on top of the fence. Try the cost calculator.
New Braunfels doesn't allow a fence inside a drainage easement. So on a lot with one along the back or the side, the fence stops at the edge of the easement, and the line gets planned from there.
Easements can show on your lot's recorded plat. We look up the plat and work out where the easement runs before the fence line is drawn, so you'll know where the fence can go before you settle on a design.
Some lots carry other public easements too. A fence can go inside one of those, but it needs a gate or a removable panel so the easement can still be reached for maintenance, and whoever is responsible for the easement has to approve the fence. We track down who that is and ask for their approval along with the permit.
Picture a back yard that runs down to a grassy channel at the bottom of the lot. Part of that slope may be inside the easement, even though it looks like your yard. The fence runs along the easement's edge instead of the bottom of the slope, and a gate in it can still give you a way down if you'd like one. If the lot is also in a mapped flood zone, the city's floodplain permit paperwork doesn't mention fences, so we ask the city what, if anything, it needs for one there before the posts go in.
Fences are priced by the foot, so the length comes first, and the table on this page gives ranges for common wood fences and a walk gate. Height, material and gates come after that. On a New Braunfels lot, the ground can add to it too: a line that climbs a slope or crosses a limestone ledge can need stepped panels, and post holes in rock take more work. Taking out an old fence is priced along with the new one. We'll measure the line and give you a single price for the whole job.
No. Mailing addresses are set by the Postal Service, and the city counts a home as being in New Braunfels when it's inside the city limits. So a house with a New Braunfels address can sit outside them, and the fence rules on this page are the city's. Before we plan anything, we check which side of the city line your lot is on.
Not the city's. New Braunfels is the Comal County seat, and part of the city reaches into Guadalupe County. Inside the city limits, the fence rules on this page apply on either side of the county line. What the county changes is where your lot's recorded plat is kept, and the plat is where a drainage easement can show. Comal County's online plat map says itself that it isn't a survey, so we go by the recorded plat from whichever county holds yours.
Both, if the lot is inside the city limits: the city's permit and fence rules, and the HOA's on top of them. Texas law generally doesn't let an HOA ban a perimeter fence put up for security. It can regulate the type of fence, prohibit fencing that blocks a drainage easement or a sidewalk, and, if its covenants say so, fencing in front of the house. On the drainage easement, the two already agree here, because the city doesn't allow a fence in one either. Where they differ, the fence has to satisfy both, so we plan it to the two sets of rules together.
The city's code puts that on the business or apartment owner or developer. When a business, or apartments with five or more units, goes in next to land used or zoned only for homes of one to four units, the developer has to build a solid wall of brick, stone or concrete between 6 and 8 feet tall along that line and keep it up. The owner next door can object in writing, and the city will then waive the wall for that property line. Where several homes share the line, the objections have to come from owners of two-thirds of its length. If that wall is coming to your back line, we'll plan the rest of your fence around it.
The town's own history tells how farmers here started out with quick wooden fences and, over the years, stacked the big stones that got in the way of their plows into boundary walls. Some of those hand-built walls are still standing. The town's builders worked in local limestone, and earlier in the German fachwerk style, a stout timber frame filled in with stone and plaster.
The city has four local historic districts: Downtown, Mill Street, Sophienburg Hill and Stock. For a property in one of them, the city requires a Certificate of Alteration before any work on the outside, and smaller changes can qualify for a review by city staff without a hearing before the Historic Landmark Commission. The city's pages don't name fences, so for a house in one of the districts, we find out whether the city's historic review covers your fence, and what it needs if it does, before we apply for the permit.
Henry D. Gruene started a large cotton farm there in the 1870s and built a store, a cotton gin and a dance hall, and the area is on the National Register of Historic Places. It isn't one of the city's four local historic districts, so for a house in Gruene we check what applies to your lot before the fence is planned.
Every service below is available for New Braunfels homes, whether that's a privacy fence stepped down a sloping yard, a low fence out front of a house in one of the historic districts, or a gate in a back fence that stops short of a drainage easement.
We take fence jobs in the towns near New Braunfels too. The cities on this list don't all use the same fence rules, so we plan each fence to the city it's in.
Tell us where the fence would run and anything you've noticed about the lot, like a back yard that drops off, a limestone ledge, a channel along the back line, or a house in one of the old districts. We'll come out, look at the line with you, and work out what the city allows there.
San Antonio Expert Fence is a fence company in San Antonio, Texas, for homes, businesses and HOAs. We repair fences and build new ones, and every job starts with a free visit and a written price.
Each city around San Antonio writes its own fence rules, and we plan every fence to the ones where your home is.
