DIY or pay a fencer? An honest look.
We are a fencing company, so read this knowing that. Some fencing jobs in Orange are a genuinely good weekend. Others will cost you more in hire fees, tip runs and a second attempt than the quote you turned down. Here is where the line sits, and why it sits there because of the ground rather than the fence.
Can you legally build your own fence here?
Yes, on your own property. The licensing rules people worry about here govern work you have done for you, not work you do yourself on your own home, so nobody is going to stop you building your own back fence. The real constraints are different ones: pool barriers, heritage streets, and the neighbour who is chipping in.
That last point catches people. You cannot serve a Fencing Notice, collect half the money from your neighbour, and then build something below the standard suitable for the properties. If they contribute, they get a say. If you want a free hand, build it entirely at your own cost and keep it on your side of the boundary. More on the notice process in our landlord fencing guide.
Whoever swings the auger, lodge a free Before You Dig Australia enquiry first. It takes two minutes, comes back in about two business days, and hitting a gas or comms service in your own back yard is your problem and your bill.
What you actually save.
Less than you think, and the reason is that materials are the smaller half of a fence quote. You are not saving the whole price of the job, you are saving the labour portion, and then handing a chunk of it straight back in hire fees and tip runs.
Worked example. A flat 30m back boundary in Lucknow, 1.8m Colorbond, no rock, no slope, no removal needed. Our quote at $105 per metre: $3,150. DIY: sheets, rails, posts and concrete $1,650, hydraulic auger hire for a day $180, mixer hire $70, tip fees for offcuts and old material $90, and a rented laser level $45. Total $2,035, so the saving is $1,115 for around 22 hours of your time. That is roughly $50 an hour, tax free, which is a perfectly respectable weekend if you enjoy it. It is a terrible weekend if you do not.
Change one variable and the maths collapses. Add rock and the auger hire becomes a rock-auger or a coring rig. Add slope and you are stepping panels. Add a tight side access and every barrow of concrete goes the long way. Full rates on the Orange fencing cost guide.
It is the holes. It is always the holes.
Every part of a fence above ground level is straightforward and forgiving. Sheets go on, rails clip in, and a careful amateur gets a result that is honestly hard to pick from ours. Then there are the holes, which are neither straightforward nor forgiving, and which happen to be the only part that decides whether the fence is still standing in 2040.
The failure mode is predictable and we see it constantly. Hole nine hits rock at 400mm. It is Sunday afternoon. The hired auger is due back Monday. So that post goes in at 400mm, gets a bit of extra concrete for confidence, and the DIYer moves on. Three winters later the frost has jacked that post and only that post, the fence bows at bay nine, and the whole run has to come out because you cannot re-foot one post in the middle of a completed Colorbond fence without dismantling both sides of it.
The other thing a hire auger will not tell you is what your soil is. The reactive basalt clay through much of Orange behaves like the moderately to highly reactive site classes under AS 2870, which is why we step footing depth and post diameter on it. There is more on the mechanism in how long a fence really lasts in Orange.
The pool fence is not a DIY job.
This is the one job we will always tell you to hand over, and we would say it even if we did not do pool fencing ourselves. A pool barrier is measured against AS 1926.1 by an inspector, so a barrier that fails gets rebuilt and you pay twice. That is the cheap version of getting it wrong.
The DIY pool barriers we are called to fix fail on the same handful of details every time: a gate that latches when you swing it hard but not when it drifts closed, a climbable rail on the wrong side, a garden bed or aircon unit that has crept into the non-climbable zone, and gaps under the panels where the clay has shrunk over summer. None of that is obvious to a competent handyman. All of it is obvious to an inspector. See the pool fencing page.
When DIY is genuinely the right call.
Short, flat, non-structural, and nobody's safety riding on it. That is the whole test, and plenty of jobs pass it: palings onto a sound existing frame, a low garden divider, re-hanging a gate, ten metres of screening on level ground. Those are good weekends.
A middle path that works well: do the demolition and disposal yourself and have us build the new fence. Stripping an old paling fence is unskilled, satisfying, and worth real money off the quote because it is a chunk of labour and a tip run we no longer carry. It is the best-value hour of DIY on the whole job, and nobody ever thinks of it.
If you do go it alone, at least read the questions we tell people to ask a fencer. Every one of them is a decision you now have to make yourself.
Common DIY fencing questions in Orange.
Can I legally build my own fence in Orange NSW?
On your own property, yes. Owner-builder rules under the Home Building Act 1989 apply to work you have done for you, not to work you do yourself on your own home, so a homeowner building their own back fence is not breaking any licensing rule. The limits are different: a pool barrier must still comply with AS 1926.1 regardless of who built it, a front fence in a heritage conservation area may need approval from Orange City Council, and if you are sharing the cost with a neighbour under the Dividing Fences Act they can reasonably object to a standard below what is suitable.
How much do you actually save building your own fence in Orange?
Less than you think, because materials are the smaller half. On a 30m Colorbond run, materials are roughly 1,400 to 1,900 dollars and a professional job is 2,700 to 3,900 dollars, so the labour you are replacing is worth about 1,300 to 2,000 dollars. Out of that you still have to hire an auger and a mixer, buy or borrow a string line, laser or level, and cart your own waste to the tip. A realistic saving on a straight, flat, easy run is 900 to 1,400 dollars for two full weekends of work.
What is the hardest part of DIY fencing in Orange?
The holes, without question. Orange sits on basalt-derived clay with shallow volcanic rock through the rises, and a hired domestic auger will spin uselessly the moment it touches rock. It is also the part that decides whether the fence lasts, because posts here have to go below the frost-affected zone and be stepped up on reactive clay. Everything above ground is straightforward and forgiving. The 15 holes you cannot dig properly are what turns a two-weekend job into a six-weekend one.
Should I DIY a pool fence in Orange?
No. This is the one we will always tell you to hand over, and not because we want the work. A pool barrier has to satisfy AS 1926.1 on gate self-closing and self-latching from every position, latch height, non-climbable zones and gaps, and it is inspected against that standard. A barrier you built yourself that fails inspection has to be rebuilt, so you pay twice, and in the meantime you have a pool that is not legally enclosed. The consequences of getting it wrong are not financial.
When is DIY fencing genuinely the right call in Orange?
When the run is short, flat, non-structural and nobody's safety depends on it. Replacing palings on an existing sound frame, building a low garden divider, re-hanging a gate, or putting up 10m of screening on a level block are all sensible weekend jobs. Get a professional for anything with a pool, anything on a shared boundary you are cost-splitting with a neighbour, anything on a slope or rock, and anything over about 25 metres, where the hole count stops being a hobby and starts being a job.
Where we fence around Orange.
Hit rock at hole nine?
It happens to everyone here. Send us what you are up to and we will give you a straight quote to finish it, or tell you it is worth pushing on yourself.