# Looking for inexpensive and effective child safe fencing ideas



## Snapdragon (Aug 30, 2007)

I am looking for ideas for an inexpensive but safe and effective way to fence in a yard area for a young toddler to keep them from the road and cars. We may be moving somewhere for a one yr period and it is on a road that cars drive on, and some of the area needs to be fenced to make a safe play area.

What are some good ideas of types of fencing I can put in that would be safe and we can do ourselves?

Any pictures of good toddler safe fencing that you have in your yard? I would like ideas of how to do this.


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## brigala (Apr 26, 2010)

When my boys were little, we put in some fence posts and stretched that plastic fencing like what they use at construction sites on it. We were able to find it in white, not just construction orange. It wasn't real pretty, and it wouldn't have had much longevity, but I didn't think it was too bad. We always planned to put up "real" fencing when we could afford it, but we ended up moving before we had the money for that. It worked for the two years or so that we needed it.


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## LiLStar (Jul 7, 2006)

I bet what we have up for our chickens would work! We got wooden fence posts that I think were around $4ish each. approx 4" diameter and 7' tall. Then we got a roll of chicken wire. 5' tall. for a toddler you could have it shorter, course! we borrowed a post hole digger, rammed those posts in there, it takes a little bit of work to pack the dirt in around them to make them good and sturdy and they need to go in about a foot deep. Then, get out a staple gun and go to town! You can use metal t posts as well, but of course then they can't be stapled! There's metal thingies to attach the chicken wire, but we found those difficult (that was our chicken fence version 1) if I were using t posts again, I'd probably just use zip ties. Welded wire is a bit pricier than chicken wire but its sturdier and a bit more attractive. We have the posts approx 10 feet apart, and bought a roll of 150' of the wire and I think it only cost like $60. We got it from a coop farm supply store. Cost less than it would have from home depot, or even our local, more suburban feed stores!

We also made a very effective gate that I'm pleased by how well it works! We used a metal t post, then got some pvc pipe that is big enough to fit over it snugly, but smoothly. Cut 2 pieces of pvc so that it would be a couple inches taller than the t post (the above ground portion of the post!) and 2 pieces that were as wide as we wanted the gate. We got 3 90* pvc joiners, and 1 T shaped joiner. make rectangle out of pvc, and attach chicken wire to it with zip ties. The T joiner is in one corner so that it can slip right over the top of the metal stake. The stake makes it sturdy. We positioned it in the fence so that the opening is next to a wooden post, and close enough so that when closed, it overlaps a few inches with the post so that it can't swing in. On the "hinge" side, we joined it to the rest of the fence with zip ties. We simply place a rock outside the door so the chickens can't push it open, but I'm sure it'd be easy to add some kind of latch. If the description is hard to understand I can take a pic.


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