Yes. There are two methods. A racked fence tilts its rails to run with the ground while the pickets stay upright. A stepped fence keeps every panel level and drops each one below the last. Racked leaves less open space at the bottom.
Hollywood is close to flat, so a true hillside is rare. The uneven ground here is a drainage swale by the street, a yard built up with fill, a berm, or a bank that slopes to a lake or canal.
Racked or stepped: which is better?
- Racked: follows the grade smoothly. It suits the mild slopes found in most Broward yards and is the better pick when a pet must stay in.
- Stepped: panels stay level and drop in stages. It is used on a sharp change, like a bank down to the water, or when the panels are rigid and cannot tilt. A wedge of open space is left below each step.
- Cut to fit on site: with wood, each board can be trimmed to the ground. It takes longer and fits closest.
I have a dog that digs and a yard that drops. How do I avoid gaps?
Have the fence racked or cut to the ground, then block the bottom. You can run a treated board along the base, trim pickets to the grade, or bury a strip of wire mesh under the fence line. Dogs tunnel through Broward sand in minutes, so for a committed digger the buried mesh is the fix that works.
My yard is steep and rocky and two companies turned the job down. Who does this?
Around Hollywood, the hard jobs are less often steep and more often awkward: a bank that falls to a canal, soft ground at a lake edge, a hole that fills with water, or a layer of limestone or old buried concrete under the sand. Each one calls for a different footing or a different tool, and some crews prefer not to deal with them. We walk the line and probe the ground before we give a price, so the quote already accounts for what is down there.
Do installers dig by hand or with a machine?
We use both. Open, sandy ground goes quickly with a power auger. We switch to hand tools near the house, in tight side yards, among roots and wherever a utility has been marked. Florida's dig law requires careful methods, such as hand digging, inside the tolerance zone around a marked line.
The fastest way to get a real number is a free on-site estimate. Call (754) 529-4274 or text us a photo of the fence line.