Fence laws in Lynchburg, Virginia
What the Lynchburg municipal code says about fences, one topic at a time, with the section number and a link to the document behind every line. Where Lynchburg sets no rule of its own, the Virginia rule is shown in its place and marked as such.
Fence laws in Lynchburg, Virginia, question by question
The short version
- Who pays on the line
- Lynchburg writes the boundary rule as an exemption, and the answer turns on whether the wall stands on its own or belongs to a terrace or a court. The figure is 0 feet, for setback from a lot line for a lawful fence.
- How tall
- Lynchburg states its fence heights inside the list of things allowed to sit in a setback, which is why they read as conditions rather than as a table, and the answer turns on the yard, the district and whether the side street has front yards on it. The figure is 4 feet, for fence or wall in a front yard.
- Permits
- A fence of any height needs no building permit in Virginia.
- Pool barriers
- Virginia handles pool fences through its statewide building code.
- Spite fences
- Lynchburg has no spite fence statute. The chapters that were read are listed below. Cities and counties decide this one.
- Measured from what
- Lynchburg leaves the measuring rule to the zoning ordinance of a locality.
- Corner lots
- Lynchburg protects a band rather than setting a ceiling, keeping sight visibility areas clear of obstructions between three and eight feet above street grade, and it applies the rule at driveways serving more than two dwelling units as well as at street intersections, and the answer turns on the type of street and its posted speed. The figure is 20 feet, for leg of the visibility area at a local street or driveway.
- Retaining walls
- Virginia writes its own statewide code and sets the bar lower than the model code does. The figure is 3 feet, for depth of unbalanced fill at or above which a retaining wall needs a building permit.
- Materials
- Lynchburg keeps its material rules in a chapter of their own and handles barbed wire by height rather than by district, and the answer turns on the material and how high off the ground it sits. The figure is 7 feet, for lowest height at which barbed wire may sit.
- Livestock
- Virginia describes a lawful fence several ways and any one of them counts, as long as the livestock cannot get through. The figure is 42 inches, for minimum height of a barbed wire or board lawful fence.
Who owns the fence between two properties in Lynchburg?
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Lynchburg answers this, but the answer changes depending on whether the wall stands on its own or belongs to a terrace or a court.
Lynchburg writes the boundary rule as an exemption. The setback requirements of the zoning ordinance are not deemed to prohibit any otherwise lawful fence or wall, provided the five height and visibility conditions are met, so the fence is released from the setback rather than given a distance to keep. That means the shared line is open and the only control is height. A wall attached to something else gets the opposite treatment: a guard railing, wall or fence around a paved terrace may be no more than four feet high, has to be less than fifty percent opaque, and has to stay at least five feet from any lot line. A private swimming pool, tennis court or basketball court on residential land keeps five feet from any lot line for a house or duplex, twenty feet for anything larger. Where a business or industrial lot abuts a house district the buffer and the fifty or hundred foot setback govern the site, not the fence.
The setback requirements of this Zoning Ordinance shall not be deemed to prohibit any otherwise lawful fence or wall
The answer turns on whether the wall stands on its own or belongs to a terrace or a court.
- a plain fence
- No setback applies. 0 ft
- a wall around a terrace
- Five feet back, half open, four feet tall. 5 ft
- a pool or a court at a house
- Five feet.
- a pool at an apartment building
- Twenty feet. 20 ft
Also on fences on the property line in Lynchburg
- set in state lawIn Virginia neighbors split a fence on the property line down the middle. Both build it, both keep it up, and both pay the same share. Two things end that duty: one neighbor choosing to leave their land open, or the two of them agreeing to something else. Va. Code § 55.1-2821Virginia · Statute
How tall can a fence be in Lynchburg?
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Lynchburg answers this, but the answer changes depending on the yard, the district and whether the side street has front yards on it.
Lynchburg states its fence heights inside the list of things allowed to sit in a setback, which is why they read as conditions rather than as a table. Four feet is the figure in a front yard. Eight feet is allowed in a side or rear yard in a residential district and ten in other districts, which is a generous back yard allowance for a house lot, two feet above the six that most Virginia cities use. A required exterior side setback goes back to four feet, and on a corner lot the same four feet governs the exterior side or rear setback abutting a street wherever a front yard is required for any lot on that side street, so the rule follows the pattern of the block rather than the shape of the lot. The whole allowance is conditional on not conflicting with the visibility standards at intersections, which the code names in the same list.
Each fence and/or wall does not exceed four feet in height in a front yard. 2. Each fence and/or wall shall not exceed eight feet in height in side and rear yards in residential districts of ten feet in height in other districts.
The answer turns on the yard, the district and whether the side street has front yards on it.
- a front yard
- Four feet. 4 ft
- a residential side or rear yard
- Eight feet. 8 ft
- any other district
- Ten feet. 10 ft
- a corner lot facing the side street
- Four feet.
Also on fence height in Lynchburg
- no rule, documents checkedVirginia sets no limit on how tall a fence at a house can be. The state fence chapter says nothing about height, and the statewide building code lets a fence of any height go up with no building permit. Counties and cities set the limit in their zoning rules. Va. Code §§ 55.1-2800 through 55.1-2841Virginia · Statute
Do I need a permit for a fence in Lynchburg?
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Virginia answers this in its own law. The words that do it are quoted below.
A fence of any height needs no building permit in Virginia. The Uniform Statewide Building Code puts no number on it at all, where most states stop the pass at six or seven feet. Two fences are left out: one needed to keep people on foot safe under Section 3306, and one used as the barrier for a swimming pool. A zoning permit from the county or city is a separate question from the building permit this section covers.
This one is Virginia law, not Lynchburg law. All Virginia findings
Fences of any height unless required for pedestrian safety as provided for by Section 3306 or used for the barrier for a swimming pool.
Also on permits in Lynchburg
- no rule, documents checkedNeither the zoning ordinance nor the fences chapter attaches a permit, a fee or an inspection to an ordinary fence. The fences chapter once carried its own height rules and they were repealed in January 2020, leaving a single sentence that points at the zoning ordinance for height and placement, and no application process replaced them. What the fences chapter does impose, only for an electric fence, is a set of duties that work like a permit without being one. A Knox remote power box or an equivalent device acceptable to the police and fire departments has to be installed so the fence can be deenergized in an emergency, and on installation the owner has to notify both departments of where the fence is and where that device is. Whether an ordinary fence needs a building permit is a question for the state building code, a separate document that was not read for this page. Chapter 17, Articles I and IILynchburg · Building code
Pool fence requirements in Lynchburg
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Virginia answers this in its own law. The words that do it are quoted below.
Virginia handles pool fences through its statewide building code. That code sends swimming pools and pool enclosures to the International Swimming Pool and Spa Code, 2021 edition. Virginia states no height of its own, so the numbers come from that private code and not from Virginia text.
This one is Virginia law, not Lynchburg law. All Virginia findings
Swimming pools, swimming pool enclosures, and aquatic recreational facilities, as that term is defined in the ISPSC, shall comply with applicable provisions of the ISPSC.
Spite fence laws in Lynchburg
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Lynchburg law has no rule about this. The chapters that were read are listed below. Cities and counties decide it instead.
Virginia has no spite fence law. Chapter 28 of Title 55.1 is the state fence chapter, and its eight parts cover electric fences, lawful fences, cattle guards, animals that get onto other land, no fence areas, fences on a property line, unincorporated communities and cutting trees. None of them mentions a fence built to bother a neighbor, and none sets a height that starts a claim.
This one is Virginia law, not Lynchburg law. All Virginia findings
Documents read before writing that:
- Va. Code §§ 55.1-2800 through 55.1-2841Virginia General Assembly
- Va. Code § 55.1-2821Virginia General Assembly
How fence height is measured in Lynchburg
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Lynchburg does not set this. It leaves it to the zoning ordinance of a locality.
Virginia does not set this. The county or city does. Section 15.2-2280 lets a locality split its land into districts and, in each one, set rules for the size, height, area, bulk, place, building, changing, repair and removal of structures. That word structures covers a fence, so a fence falls inside it. The section never says how a height is taken, so the local ordinance gives both the limit and the point the measuring starts from.
This one is Virginia law, not Lynchburg law. All Virginia findings
The size, height, area, bulk, location, erection, construction, reconstruction, alteration, repair, maintenance, razing, or removal of structures;
The code hands this to the zoning ordinance of a locality, which is not published in the code itself.
Also on how height is measured in Lynchburg
- no rule, documents checkedThe height allowances of four feet, eight feet and ten feet are stated without a datum. No grade is named for them, a berm is not addressed, and a fence built on a retaining wall is not addressed, even though the fences chapter has a retaining wall section of its own requiring the wall to be designed and drained to resist lateral pressure. Two other rules in the same pair of chapters are precise. Barbed wire is measured at seven feet above the adjacent ground level, picking the ground next to the fence rather than a lot average. The corner rule is measured above street grade, which moves the datum off the lot entirely and into the road. Setbacks get their own instruction as well, measured as the shortest horizontal distance from a property line treated as a vertical plane, so the code is careful about how it measures across and silent about how it measures up. Section 35.2-61.3(e)(5)Lynchburg · Zoning code
Fence rules for corner lots in Lynchburg
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Lynchburg answers this, but the answer changes depending on the type of street and its posted speed.
Lynchburg protects a band rather than setting a ceiling, keeping sight visibility areas clear of obstructions between three and eight feet above street grade, and it applies the rule at driveways serving more than two dwelling units as well as at street intersections. Nothing over three feet may be erected, placed or maintained in those areas, with one exception that most codes do not write down: posts, columns or trees are allowed provided they stand at least six feet apart from each other, which lets a colonnade or a row of street trees through on the reasoning that a driver can see between them. The size of the area comes from a table keyed to street type and posted speed, running from twenty feet by twenty for local streets and driveways to thirty by thirty where two urban collectors or arterials meet, and the legs are measured from the intersection of the edges of pavement. Above thirty five miles an hour the City Engineer sets it against VDOT sight distances.
Sight visibility areas shall be maintained free of visual obstructions to between the height of three and eight feet above street grade. No building, fence, wall, hedge or other structure or planting more than three feet in height other than posts, columns or trees separated by not less than six feet from each other, shall be erected, placed or maintained in these areas.
The answer turns on the type of street and its posted speed.
- local streets and driveways
- Twenty feet by twenty. 20 ft
- two collectors or arterials
- Thirty by thirty. 30 ft
- a fence inside the area
- Three feet. 3 ft
- posts, columns or trees
- Allowed six feet apart. 6 ft
Also on corner visibility in Lynchburg
- set in state lawVirginia prints a real triangle in its code, and it is about signs rather than fences. Section 33.2-1216 bans an advertisement at a public road crossing where it would block the clear view between a point 20 feet back on the side road and points 400 feet away along the main road. The next clause draws a second triangle at a railroad crossing, 400 feet along the road and 500 feet along the track. Every one of these rules covers advertising, so none of them reaches a fence on a house lot. Va. Code 33.2-1216Virginia · Traffic code
Retaining wall rules in Lynchburg
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Virginia answers this in its own law. The words that do it are quoted below.
Virginia writes its own statewide code and sets the bar lower than the model code does. A wall that holds back earth gets a pass from the permit only while it holds back less than three feet of unbalanced fill, which is the dirt piled on the high side with nothing on the low side to push back. Virginia measures the dirt and not the wall, the same way Utah does, and it stops a foot sooner. No other state read here sets it lower. Two things end the pass: a wall built to hold Class I, II or III-A liquids, and a wall carrying a surcharge, which means a load pressing on the dirt behind it on top of the ordinary fill. Skipping the permit does not excuse work that breaks another part of the code, and a zoning permit from the county or city is a separate question.
This one is Virginia law, not Lynchburg law. All Virginia findings
Retaining walls supporting less than three feet of unbalanced fill that are not constructed for the purpose of impounding Class I, II, or III-A liquids or supporting a surcharge other than ordinary unbalanced fill.
13VAC5-63-80 B, Section 108.2, item 7
3 ftdepth of unbalanced fill at or above which a retaining wall needs a building permit
Fence materials allowed in Lynchburg
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Lynchburg answers this, but the answer changes depending on the material and how high off the ground it sits.
Lynchburg keeps its material rules in a chapter of their own and handles barbed wire by height rather than by district. The wire is not prohibited anywhere in the city; it simply may not be used in any fence unless it sits at least seven feet above the adjacent ground level, which puts it out of reach on a residential street as surely as a ban would and leaves it usable on a yard fence behind a business. A pointed fence is barred only where it is a hazard to public safety, which is a judgment rather than a measurement. The electric fence rules are among the most detailed in this project. The energizer runs off a commercial storage battery of no more than twelve volts charged primarily by a solar panel, the fence is built to International Standard IEC 60335-2-76, it is allowed only around non-residential storage areas, it has to be ringed by a non-electric fence, it may rise only two feet above that fence, and warning signs go up every thirty feet.
Barbed wire shall not be used in the construction of any fence unless such wire is at least seven feet above the adjacent ground level.
The answer turns on the material and how high off the ground it sits.
- barbed wire
- Seven feet up, anywhere. 7 ft
- a pointed fence
- Out where it is a hazard.
- an electric fence
- Storage areas only, inside another fence. 2 ft
- warning signs on it
- Every thirty feet. 30 ft
Also on materials in Lynchburg
- set in state lawVirginia puts the electric fence first in its fence chapter, and the rule is about the box rather than the wire. On land used for farming, an electric fence cannot be sold, handed out, built, put in, kept or used unless a controlling device holds down the charge running through it. That device has to carry the Underwriters Laboratories label under UL 69, or meet the matching standard from the International Electrotechnical Commission. One device can feed only one connected run of fence, and it has to be grounded when it goes into service. A device that meets neither standard can be used only while it stays inside the current limits the next section prints. Breaking any of this is a Class 1 misdemeanor. Va. Code 55.1-2801Virginia · Statute
Livestock and boundary fence law in Lynchburg
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Virginia answers this in its own law. The words that do it are quoted below.
Virginia describes a lawful fence several ways and any one of them counts, as long as the livestock cannot get through. One is a fence at least five feet high. One is barbed wire at least 42 inches high with at least four strands, fixed to posts set no more than 12 feet apart, unless a stay or brace sits halfway between them. One is boards, planks or rails at least 42 inches high with at least three boards. A cattle guard strong enough to turn livestock counts too.
This one is Virginia law, not Lynchburg law. All Virginia findings
2. Made of barbed wire, at least 42 inches high, consisting of at least four strands of barbed wire, firmly fixed to posts, trees, or other supports substantially set in the ground, spaced no farther than 12 feet apart unless a substantial stay or brace is installed halfway between such posts, trees, or other supports to which such wires are also fixed;
42 inminimum height of a barbed wire or board lawful fence
Also on agricultural fencing in Lynchburg
- set in state lawIn Virginia the damages follow the fence. When livestock get into land that is already fenced in by a lawful fence, the owner of the animal pays the real damage. The fence has to be there first, which makes the landowner the one who builds, unless the county has changed the rule. Va. Code 55.1-2810Virginia · Statute
- set in state lawA county board can flip that rule for all or part of the county. By ordinance it can declare the line of every lot or tract, or a stream, to be a lawful fence, which means no fence has to be built at all for the damages rule to work. It can also name a different kind of fence than the one the state describes. Where that ordinance is in place, the owner of livestock may not let them off their own land. Va. Code 55.1-2814Virginia · Statute
Documents behind this page
8 documents, of which 2 were published by Lynchburg itself. Each was read on the date shown.
- Virginia General AssemblyCode of Virginia, Title 55.1, Chapter 28, Article 6, Section 55.1-2821, Obligation to provide division fences
- City of LynchburgLynchburg Code of Ordinances, Chapter 35.2, Zoning Ordinance, Article VI, Site Development Standards
- Virginia General AssemblyCode of Virginia, Title 55.1, Chapter 28, Trespasses; Fences, full chapter listing
- Virginia Department of Housing and Community DevelopmentVirginia Administrative Code, 13VAC5-63-80, Section 108 Application for permit
- City of LynchburgLynchburg Code of Ordinances, Chapter 17, Fences and Walls
- Virginia Department of Housing and Community DevelopmentVirginia Administrative Code, 13VAC5-63-336, Chapter 31 Special construction, Section 3109.1
- Virginia General AssemblyCode of Virginia, Title 15.2, Chapter 22, Planning, Subdivision of Land and Zoning
- Virginia General AssemblyCode of Virginia, Title 33.2, Chapter 12, Outdoor Advertising in Sight of Public Highways
What this page does not cover
A city ordinance is not the only rule that reaches a fence. The zoning district a parcel sits in can change the height allowed on it, and so can an overlay district, a recorded easement, a fire hazard severity zone or a coastal zone. A homeowner association can be stricter than the city and nothing in the municipal code will say so. None of those appear here.
The rules above are the ones Lynchburg publishes, plus the Virginia rules that apply where the city sets none. Fence laws in Virginia has the state layer in full.
This is general information drawn from published government documents. It is not legal advice, ordinances are amended, and the date beside each finding is the date the document was read. How findings are made · What the terms mean