Fence installation and repair in Littleton.

Littleton permits every fence — and asks for the post depth

The City of Littleton requires a building permit for all fences. There is no height exemption. Fences must also be separated from sidewalks and public right-of-way by a minimum of two feet, and any fence over seven feet tall requires stamped engineered drawings.

The detail that says the most is on the application itself. Littleton's site plan requirements ask for fence height, linear feet, elevations, a north arrow, type of materials — and post depth. A city does not put post depth on a permit form because it's curious. It puts it there because it has seen what happens when a fence goes in on 18-inch posts and the clay and the frost get to work on it.

Permits go through the city's eTRAKiT portal. We pull them as part of the job, and the post depth we write on the form is the post depth we dig.

• ▸Permit required for ALL fences — no height exemption
• ▸Site plan must show height, linear feet, elevations, materials, and post depth
• ▸Over 7 ft — stamped engineered drawings required
• ▸Minimum 2 ft separation from sidewalks and public right-of-way
• ▸Submitted through the city's eTRAKiT portal

Height rules under the Unified Land Use Code

Littleton's fence standards live in the Unified Land Use Code. Front yard fences are capped at 48 inches, and they have to be open — at least 50 percent open on an interior lot, and at least 75 percent open on a corner lot. That corner-lot number is stricter than most of the Front Range, and it means a corner lot in Littleton essentially cannot have a solid front fence.

Side and rear yards allow six feet, and those may be 100 percent solid. Anything above six feet in the side or rear requires a variance from the Board of Adjustment — which is a real process, not a formality.

One thing to watch: a lot of what people call Littleton isn't in the city. Columbine, Ken Caryl, and Highlands Ranch all carry Littleton mailing addresses and none of them are inside Littleton's city limits. If your mail says Littleton, that does not tell us who issues your permit. We check the actual jurisdiction before we quote — because pulling the wrong permit is worse than pulling none.

• ▸Front yard — 48 in. max; ≥50% open on interior lots, ≥75% open on corner lots
• ▸Side and rear — 6 ft, may be fully solid
• ▸Over 6 ft in side/rear — Board of Adjustment variance
• ▸A Littleton mailing address is not a Littleton jurisdiction — we verify

Littleton ground, and Littleton's fence age

The soils under Littleton are the expansive kind. The dominant mapped units around here — the Nunn and Fondis series — carry high clay content and high shrink-swell potential; the Nunn series is classified as smectitic, which is the mineralogy that does the swelling. The Colorado Geological Survey is blunt about what that means: these clays can expand substantially by volume when they get wet and exert enormous pressure doing it.

Littleton's own building code amendments put frost depth at 36 inches. Between the frost and the clay, a shallow post here is a post on a countdown. Thirty-six inches, in a real concrete footer, crowned to shed water.

The other Littleton reality is the age of the fence stock. The median home in Littleton was built in the early 1980s, which means a huge share of the city's fences are somewhere between 30 and 45 years old — well past the life of a cedar privacy fence that was never re-stained. Littleton isn't a new-build market for us. It's a repair-and-replace market, and the honest first question is always which one you actually need.

The four fences, in Littleton

Permits, height, and the HOA

Littleton requires a building permit for all fences — no height exemption. Fences over seven feet tall require stamped engineered drawings, and fences must be separated from sidewalks and public right-of-way by a minimum of two feet. Applications go through the city's eTRAKiT portal.

The site plan has to show fence height, linear feet, elevations, a north arrow, type of materials, and post depth. Height limits under the Unified Land Use Code: 48 inches in the front yard, at least 50 percent open on interior lots and 75 percent open on corner lots; six feet in the side and rear, which may be fully solid; anything taller in the side or rear needs a Board of Adjustment variance.

Be careful about jurisdiction. Columbine, Ken Caryl, and Highlands Ranch carry Littleton mailing addresses but sit outside the city limits, under different rules. We confirm which authority actually governs your address before we pull anything.

Codes change. Verify current requirements with the City of Littleton Permit Center— 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.