Goodness me! I’ve heard of a lot of reasons to install a fence…you know; privacy, boundary lines, keep your pets in, making it more difficult for intruders to enter, that sort of thing. But, I’ve never thought of protecting a fence from kids, especially young children.
Actually, I’d be more concerned that any fence I have on my property be constructed with the safety of children in mind.
This is obviously not the case with the writer of the article below, and I’m hoping she was just writing to vent frustration.
Protect Your Garden Fence from Kids with a Bumper: Pipe Speed …
“A speed bump can be made with pipes to help deter kids pedaling bikes or pushing scooters through a garden fence.voices.yahoo.com/protect-garden-fence-kids-bumper-115202…”
http://voices.yahoo.com/protect-garden-fence-kids-bumper-11520204.html
Did you have a hard time trying to figure out what kind of fence the writer was referring to? The best guess I have, is a border fence. The kind that is prefabricated and stuck into the ground with stakes (about six inches in depth).
The most common use for these kind of fences is to edge a planting area for decoration. They are not meant to keep dogs and kids out (I’ll concede a bit here and say they may be a deterrent), so of course, they can be easily knocked down. I think the author knew this, when she wrote…
A garden fence or an expandable fence that can be used to mark boundaries or keep animals out may not be enough to stop kids from pedaling bikes or pushing scooters through them and they may not be strong enough to withstand dogs that might decide to jump on them and knock them down. The fences are also easy to pick or pull up and move.
Pretty much the truth about what she said above, but her last sentence got me to thinking about she recommended the “fix” she did.
It may not be an easy fix to prevent animals from tearing down the garden fence or to keep neighbors from moving them but you may be able to slow kids down or keep them from driving things through them.
She admits that it won’t stop the dogs. She admits it won’t stop the neighbors from moving them (have to wonder; why they are moving them?). She admits it may only slow the kids down. So the last phrase, “keep them from driving things through them,” doesn’t make much sense.
Now, for her solution. Lay a half-buried pipe in front of the fence section. As a precautionary measure she tells us to…
Make sure to file down any sharp edges on each end of the pipe or anywhere else on the pipe, which may be sharp so as to avoid injuries.
Next, she assures us that this “bumper” will…
The pipe will act as a bumper so that kids will hit or bounce off the pipe instead of the fence.
If a child should hit or bounce off the pipe, terrible things can happen. Should the child lose control, at best, they would end up in the yard. Envision though, a kid that falls on the sidewalk, or worse, is thrown onto the street in front of an oncoming car.
There’s a time to be glad we have homeowner associations, local ordinances and laws. And although I’m not always happy with the ways things are done, this is one instance where I’d being checking.
For some odd reason, public endangerment comes to mind!
