Top Fence Maintenance Tips To Help Protect Your New Fencing

As a great fence can boost the value of your home, many homeowners consider fence maintenance to be a chore that pays dividends, so to speak. After all, investing in the beautification of your home doesn’t just provide value in the form of boosting your property’s appeal – it can also enhance the comfort and livability of your home.

That being said, nobody wants to spend dozens of hours every week on oiling, treating, or washing their property fencing. And it’s only natural to want to maintain a limit on your fence maintenance responsibilities anyway. That’s why today, we’ll be sharing our top fence maintenance tips – tried and tested by your expert local fencing suppliers here at Outback Fencing.

In this blog post, we’ll be going through some maintenance tips that are specific to some of the most popular fencing materials in Australia and some general pointers that work for the majority of fence types.

• Colorbond Fence Maintenance
• Steel Fence Maintenance
• PVC Fencing Maintenance
• Aluminium Fence Maintenance
• Glass Fence Maintenance
• General Fence Maintenance Tips

Colorbond Fence Maintenance

Colorbond is a specialised steel that was specifically made to withstand the Australian environment. Colorbond fences are some of the easiest fence types to maintain, but you still need to put in a little maintenance work here and there to maximise your fence’s lifespan and aesthetic value.

To maintain your Colorbond fencing, all you really need to do on a regular basis is hose your fence panels down to prevent dirt from building up along the sides. To make this easier on yourself, you can wash your fence at the same time as you do your cars.

Another Colorbond fence maintenance tip is to ensure that part of your fence is not buried under soil to prevent corrosion from the moisture. You also want to avoid using harsh chemical cleaners: water is enough of a maintenance measure for your Colorbond fence.

Steel Fence Maintenance

Steel is one of the most elegant fencing materials out there, and when properly maintained, a steel fence can take your home’s street appeal to the next level and instantly boost your house’s value.

When it comes to maintaining a steel fence, the thing to focus on is prevention. You want to maintain your fence free of rust, particularly if you live in a coastal area. Apply a protective coating over your fence to protect it against moisture. You also want to keep vegetation away from your steel fence for the same reason.

As soon as you spot a patch of rust on your steel fence, immediately deal with it by sanding and repainting it to stop it from spreading and maintain your fence’s pristine condition. And if your steel fence is proving to be accompanied by too much upkeep, consider swapping it out for an aluminium fence instead. In the great debate between steel vs. aluminium fencing, both undoubtedly have their own benefits – so long as the materials are treated to withstand harsh climatic conditions across Australia!

PVC Fencing Maintenance

PVC fences are such a popular choice among homeowners in part due to their rot-resistant properties, which makes maintaining this sort of fence that much easier. All you need to do is to get rid of dirt or stains with a damp cloth or towel.

If moisture does build up, the nature of PVC as a material prevents any debris that might latch on to it easy to get rid of with a sponge or towel, making maintenance easy. By understanding how best to care for your PVC fence and following those easy fence maintenance tips, you’ll ensure that your PVC fence panel can look their best for decades to come.

Aluminium Fence Maintenance

Aluminium fencing is extremely versatile and easy to maintain. The main aluminium fencing maintenance tip to keep in mind is to avoid cleaners that contain harsh solvents like acetone to avoid damaging your fence’s protective powder coating.

To maintain your aluminium fence, all you need to do is wash it down with a hose and scrub more persistent clumps of dirt away with a soapy sponge. Make sure to wash away the soap suds after doing this to keep them from building up on your fence. You can also keep your aluminium fence free of unwanted plant material using a shovel or other similar garden maintenance tools.

General aluminium fence maintenance only needs to be done every year or so, making it a relatively breezy task. Thankfully, aluminium is also resistant to rust, mould, and mildew formation, making it a great fencing material for pool fencing. If you’re after a low-maintenance fencing material for your property perimeter fencing or even pool safety fencing, you can’t go wrong with some aluminium fence panels.

Glass Fence Maintenance

Glass fencing is quickly becoming an incredibly popular fencing option in Australia, especially when used around pools. As you might imagine, glass is more delicate than the other fencing materials on this list, and step one to maintaining glass fences is to protect them from external shocks.

Similarly to PVC, Colorbond, and aluminium fencing, you can easily clean your glass fence by scrubbing it gently with a sponge dipped in warm water and a little soap. You should, however, perform cleaning and maintenance on glass fences more regularly than other fence types since dirt is more visible due to glass’ transparent nature.

For tougher stains, another glass fence maintenance tip would be to use the glass cleaning sprays you might use for your bathroom or windows. These formulae were specifically designed to get rid of more stubborn dirt on glass surfaces like pool fences.

General Fence Maintenance Tips

We’ve just gone over some fence maintenance tips that are specific to certain fence types. But there are also some key principles to keep in mind when it comes to general fence maintenance. Here are some tips for maintaining your fence, whatever material it’s made of.

Maintain Your Fence Regularly

One of the most important tips for maintaining your fence is to do so regularly. Depending on the type of fence you have, you might have to maintain your fence annually, every few months and so on. Obviously, you want to perform cleaning and maintenance as soon as you see significant amounts of dirt build up on your fence.

Fix Maintenance Issues Immediately

When it comes to fence maintenance, speed is key. The longer you leave a fence maintenance issue alone, the bigger the problem will grow and the harder (and more expensive) it will be to restore your fence to its original condition.

A clear example of this is maintaining a steel fence by dealing with rust as soon as it appears to prevent its spreading across the fence.

Don’t Use Abrasive Solutions In Fence Maintenance

When maintaining your fence, it’s crucial to avoid using potentially harmful cleaning solutions. Acetone and bleach are two examples of ingredients present in many cleaning products that can be harmful to fences. Different cleaners will be appropriate depending on the specific fencing material you’re performing maintenance on.

If you’re not sure whether a certain cleaner should be used for a particular fencing material, we’re always happy to provide advice. Simply reach out to us, and we’ll provide you with some personalised maintenance advice for your fence.

Hire A Professional Cleaner For Fence Maintenance

For larger-scale cleaning and maintenance work, you might be best off hiring a professional cleaner to work on your fence. The cost of hiring a professional to do major maintenance work will be significantly lower than the cost of buying a brand-new fence due to irreparable structural damage to your old one.

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If you’re a homeowner, one of your primary concerns is to maintain your fence in tip-top shape. In this post, we’ve gone through how to maintain specific fence materials like steel and glass, as well as some general maintenance tips that are useful across the board.

By incorporating these maintenance tips into your cleaning routine, you’ll ensure that your fences last a long time without losing any of their aesthetic value.

And as always, don’t hesitate to chat with us if you have your eye on a particular fence and would like to learn more about it or want to learn more about maintaining an existing fence. Our team at Outback Fencing is always here to help with any fence maintenance, installation, or even just fence purchasing questions!