Fence installation and repair in Lakewood.

The permit rule everybody gets wrong

Lakewood's Zoning Ordinance § 17.6.6 states that no fence, wall, trellis, pergola, or arbor may be erected — including replacement and repair — without a fence and/or building permit, unless the structure is less than eight feet long and less than six feet high.

Read that carefully, because the "and" matters. The exemption only covers something that is both under eight feet long and under six feet high. A standard 100-foot back-yard run doesn't qualify. Neither does a four-foot fence, if it's longer than eight feet. And the ordinance explicitly names replacement and repair, which is the part that surprises people who assume swapping a rotted section is a free action.

We pull permits as part of the job. It's not the hard part — the hard part is finding out about it after you've already built, which is a conversation we have with homeowners who hired somebody cheaper and didn't ask.

Height rules that are specific to Lakewood

Front yard: fences in the primary front yard of single-family, duplex, and attached residential uses cannot exceed four feet in height and must be a minimum of fifty percent open. That means no solid six-foot privacy fence across the front of the house — the code wants sight lines.

Rear yard, side yard, and non-primary front yard: fences may be solid and may go to six feet.

The Lakewood-specific one worth knowing: solid fences and walls may be erected to a height of eight feet to separate a property from an arterial street, or from a frontage road adjacent to U.S. 6 and U.S. 285. If your lot backs an arterial or one of those highway frontage roads, you have more height available than your neighbor a block in — and if you're eating road noise, that extra two feet is worth having.

Two more that come up on every Lakewood walk: fences must be installed with the finished side facing a public street or public space, and they need to sit back a minimum of two feet from the back edge of the sidewalk.

• ▸Primary front yard — 4 ft max, minimum 50% open
• ▸Rear, side, non-primary front — solid allowed, 6 ft max
• ▸Against an arterial or a U.S. 6 / U.S. 285 frontage road — solid to 8 ft
• ▸Finished side faces the street; 2 ft back from the sidewalk edge
• ▸Retaining walls over 3 ft need a building permit

Ground and wind in Lakewood

Lakewood sits at about 5,656 feet, on the Jefferson County side of the metro and running west toward the hogback. That's the transition zone — the expansive clay soils of the Front Range piedmont on the east side of town, getting rockier and less forgiving as you move toward Green Mountain and the foothills.

The clay is what most of Lakewood is set in, and it's the one that quietly kills a shallow post. The Colorado Geological Survey documents these smectitic clays across the Front Range piedmont — they swell hard when wet and shrink when dry, and that cycle works a post loose over years. The defense is depth and a real concrete footer.

Then there's the wind. Lakewood's western neighborhoods are close enough to the foothills to catch downslope windstorms coming off the mountains, and a six-foot solid privacy fence is a sail. On the west side of town we build privacy fence differently than we do on the east side — deeper posts, wider footers, three rails, and often a shadowbox layout that lets air bleed through instead of taking the full load.

The four fences, in Lakewood

Permits, height, and the HOA

Lakewood's Zoning Ordinance § 17.6.6 requires a fence and/or building permit for any fence, wall, trellis, pergola, or arbor — including replacement and repair — unless the structure is less than eight feet long and less than six feet high. In practice, that means nearly every real fence in Lakewood needs a permit.

Height: four feet and at least fifty percent open in the primary front yard; solid to six feet in the rear, side, and non-primary front yards; solid to eight feet where the fence separates a property from an arterial street or a frontage road adjacent to U.S. 6 or U.S. 285. Retaining walls over three feet require a building permit on their own.

If you're in an HOA — and a lot of Lakewood is — the HOA's covenants sit on top of the city code, not instead of it. The HOA can be stricter than the city on height, material, and color, and it usually is. Get their approval and the city's permit. We'll handle the city side.

Codes change. Verify current requirements with the City of Lakewood Planning Department— and with your HOA if you have one — before you build. We'll walk it with you and flag anything on your lot that's going to matter.