May take longer depending on the size of the fence
Cost
$50-$100
May be worth the DIY if your budget is tight.
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What you'll need:
TOOLS
Maul
Shovel
Hoe (optional)
SUPPLIES
Silt fencing kit (including appropriate fabric and wood stakes)
Whether you’re building a deck or landscaping your backyard, outdoor projects tend to create a mess on your property. If not properly contained, the soil you displace can spread far and wide with harsh consequences. That’s why you need a silt fence: a temporary fence that’s sold preassembled at most hardware stores consisting of specially designed porous fabric stapled to wooden stakes.
Silt fences are simple to install if you understand how to place them correctly and don’t mind a lot of digging. Read on to learn how to install a silt fence for responsible home construction projects.
Preparing to Install a Silt Fence
These fences stop the soil disturbed by your construction project from running off into the streets and waterways, causing environmental damage. In most areas, a silt fence is required for home construction, and the Environmental Protection Agency has set specific guidelines for how to build a silt fence properly.
While simply constructed and sold at hardware stores for around $50 per roll, a silt fence is not easy to install yourself. You may be able to dig a trench and place the stakes, but the critical task of placing a silt fence correctly is difficult and best left to the professionals. Consider consulting a local fence company, at the very least, before starting this project.
Once you’ve read the EPA guidelines and consulted a pro, you’re ready to build your silt fence.
Determine the Placement
It’s crucial to place your silt fence correctly; otherwise, you risk wasting your money and time. Mark the path for your fence in advance, with specific attention paid to the direction water will move. You should be creating “soil storage areas” with multiple silt fence sections that are shaped like a J. That way, water will pool behind the fabric and have different places to go rather than accumulating in one heavy mass that weighs down or overflows one section of the silt fence during rainfall.
The most important thing to avoid is water flowing around the ends of a silt fence since this will erode the land and basically defeat the purpose of the fence. Make sure that at each end of the fence, the bottoms are higher than the top of the fence’s middle.
Mark the path for your silt fence by unrolling the fabric around the perimeter of the soil you want undisturbed. Go one section at a time, lying the fabric side down in the direction water is more likely to come from.
Now that you’ve marked out where the fence will go, you’ll want to dig a trench to secure it.
This is no easy task, especially if you have a lot of fencing to install. Hiring an excavator could significantly lighten the load. If you’re doing it yourself, use your shovel to dig out a trench that is wider at the top than the bottom, 6 to 8 inches deep and 4 inches wide. Most store-bought fencing has a line marking the depth of soil required on each stake for reference.
Bury the Silt Fence
Now it’s time to stand your fencing upright and bury it in the ditch you created. Stick the bottom of the stakes and the lower half of the fabric inside the trench, and use your shovel or a hoe to backfill the trench with dirt. No need to place dirt behind the fabric and stakes; just make sure they’re anchored in the ground firmly.
Pack it down tight and pound each stake with your maul to make sure it’s securely in the ground. Your fence should stand around 14 inches above the ground, with at least six inches below the ground.
If you need multiple rolls of silt fencing to cover the area, overlap the section where the two rolls meet so that there are two swaths of fabric between the span of those two posts.
Silt Fence Maintenance
Photo: StevertS / Adobe Stock
Now that you understand how to install a silt fence, remember that it needs occasional maintenance. Check your fence to make sure it retains its shape and doesn’t sag, especially after heavy rain or wind. If water runs around the ends of your silt fence and disturbs the soil it protects, it’s basically useless. That’s when it’s time to pull up the stakes and reevaluate how they’re placed.
DIY vs. Hiring a Pro
Silt fencing is the kind of DIY project that can save you a lot of money when compared with the cost of installing fencing professionally. It involves a lot of hard labor, though, and digging a trench by hand is not for the faint of heart.
Further, it’s inadvisable to launch into silt fence installation without thoroughly researching how to design the fence—if you place it incorrectly, it won’t work at all, and you’ll risk letting your soil run off to cause a lot of damage to the area.
We recommend hiring a local fence company to do the job properly, at least at the planning stage.
Frequently Asked Questions
You should dig a trench that’s 6 to 8 inches deep so that when the silt fence stands up, it has at least 6 inches below ground. It’s important to firmly bury your silt fence into the trench you’ve dug to keep water from running underneath the fence into the pile of soil you’re containing.
When your rolls of silt fence join together, you’ll want to overlap them to make sure they’re still as effective at keeping water out without requiring fastening together. Overlap two sections of the silt fencing so that two sheets of fabric cover the span of two posts. If you want to fasten them together, you can staple them or use a zip tie, depending on whether your posts are metal or wood.
Sophie loves helping people make the most out of their homes. She is always researching ways to save money through DIY projects as she slowly renovates a 110-year-old Hudson Valley home with her husband. Her work can be found on mortgage and home services startups like Better.com and Landis.
Sophie loves helping people make the most out of their homes. She is always researching ways to save money through DIY projects as she slowly renovates a 110-year-old Hudson Valley home with her husband. Her work can be found on mortgage and home services startups like Better.com and Landis.
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