Creosote on fences

[WendyS]

Our next door neighbour is erecting a replacement feather eded fence on our garden boundary and coating each slat with creosote both sides before nailing it on. .It's his fence so we assume he can legally do this. But we really wanted to stain our side green to match our other existing fences. Is there anything we can put on the fence our side to reduce the black colour and will anything else be effective on top of creosote? And can we legally try to do this?

[kwicky]

What an unusual situation? If it were your boundary (obtained from your deeds) then you should be expected to erect a fence of your choosing and coat it to your specifications. It is not normal practice to coat a neighbours side of the fence unless he has been given permission and then usually enters your property to carry out the work which I presume you would have refused.

Creosote is oil based and unlikely to accept any other coating on top. I get the impression he is trying to walk all over you, so rather than bottle it up it might be worth having a few words to clear the air.

[burnhal]

Sure its creosote? You are not allowed to use creosote any longer- possibly cuses cancer

[Figi]

Creosote is now unobtainable so I doubt if it is. Probably just timber treatment.

[Ethel]

If the boundary is his, according to the deeds - the arrows will be pointing into his garden, then you cannot legally paint it, attach things to it or anything else without his permission.

If it is a party fence - arrows going both ways - then you should share costs and decisions and can do what you like with your own side as long as it is not to the detriment of the fence.

[pidgoe]

you could erect trellis painted green safely on your side of the boarder and then grow plants up it. Or simlarily use bamboo or read mats so you dont see so much of the black. However if your neighbour is taking so much time, money and effort to put the fence up i would think twice before painting it green. It sound like he is just trying to make the fence last which benefits both of you

[WendyS]

Well, we thought we'd reached an ideal compomise. He agreed not to coat the remainder of our side of the fence with creosote so that we could use our own fence colouring. Unfortunately the creosote has seeped through the wood to our side and we've discovered that none of the proprietary fence coatings can be used over unweathered creosote which has to weather between 8 - 10 years.