The short version
A leaning fence post is not a broken fence. Nine times out of ten around Lafayette it's a perfectly good fence hanging off a post the ground moved. So the fix is one post's worth of money, not a fence's worth — as long as it addresses why the post leaned.
I'm Dave Rogers, owner-operator of Get Fenced! in Lafayette — licensed and insured. Leaning posts are our most common repair call, and the number I quote depends entirely on why it's leaning. Start there.
Why fence posts lean in Indiana
- Frost heave. Our clay swells when wet and grips like a vise when frozen. A concrete-set post is a smooth collar in that clay, and every freeze-thaw cycle — Lafayette averages 30-plus a winter — ratchets it up a little. By March the fence has a new angle. The post didn't fail. The plug moved. The full physics is in our guide to fence post depth in Indiana clay.
- Ground-line rot. Wood rots where wood, water, and dirt meet — right at grade, hidden inside the concrete collar. The post looks fine at the grass line and is oatmeal two inches down. It leans slowly, then snaps in a 40-mph gust. If one post has done this, its siblings set the same year are on the same clock.
- Wind racking. A 6-foot privacy fence is a sail. Years of gusts on one side work the post in its hole until the backfill gives up. Least common, most fixable — the post itself is usually still good.
- The gate post, specifically. Gate posts carry all the swing load on a lever arm. When one goes out of plumb the gate stops latching and everybody blames the gate. It's the post. More on gates here.
The three fixes, with real numbers
Every repair visit from us starts at $350. That covers the truck, the first hour of work, and the basic hardware. It's not a fee on top of the job; for a lot of small fixes it is the job. The per-item lines below stack on it. Full menu on the fence repair page.
1. Brace it and re-tamp it
Dig around the base, lever the post plumb, pack the hole with gravel and dry-mix, tamp it hard. Cheapest option, and the one the YouTube videos show you.
- Works when: the post is sound and it moved because of soft backfill or one wind event. A chain link line post that racked in a storm is the textbook case.
- Doesn't work when: it heaved. You're putting the same collar back in the same clay and asking winter to be nicer this time. It won't be. And we won't sister a rotted post to a stake — it fails in the next wind and you've paid twice.
- Price: a post or two of re-tamping fits inside the $350 minimum visit. I'll be honest that I recommend it maybe one call in ten.
2. Pull it and reset it in concrete
What most outfits mean by "post repair": dig out the old plug, set a wood post, pour a fresh bag of concrete around it. Looks stiff the day they leave.
- Pros: familiar, and a new wood post is cheap at the lumber yard.
- Cons: you now own a bigger hole of disturbed backfill, a brand-new collar for the clay to grab, and a wood post back in a concrete boot with its rot clock reset. Plus cure time. In Tippecanoe County clay, this is the fix that generates next spring's call.
- Price: we don't offer it, so I won't make up a number for it. Ask whoever does, and ask them what happens in March.
3. Replace it with a driven galvanized steel post
Our fix. We don't dig, we don't pour. We pull the failed post and its plug, then a hydraulic driver pushes a heavy-wall galvanized steel post into undisturbed clay below the frost line — 36 to 42 inches here. Your existing rails and boards bracket back onto the steel. Same fence, new spine.
- Pros: no collar to heave, no wood in soil to rot, full-length grip in undisturbed ground for wind, no cure time. Same system under every new wood privacy fence we build.
- Cons: $225 is not $40. A new post doesn't fix tired boards or a rotted bottom rail, and I'll say so in the photo estimate, not after. And on the rare lot with buried rubble, the driver can't go through it — we show you and price the workaround before proceeding.
- Price: $225 per post on top of the $350 visit, old-concrete extraction included. One leaning post: $575. A leaning gate post plus re-hanging the gate with anti-sag hardware and a latch that actually catches: $350 + $225 + $250 = $825.
Every one of those numbers is an estimate from your photos until I'm standing at the fence. Rarely off by much — but the number I hand you in the driveway is the one you sign.
When a leaning run means the fence is done
Post-by-post surgery has a crossover point, and I'd rather show it to you than sell around it:
- One to three posts leaning, boards solid → repair. Three posts is $350 + 3 × $225 = $1,025 and the fence you already paid for gets another decade. Anyone quoting a new fence off that is selling, not solving.
- More than a third of the posts failing → run both numbers. A 150-foot run with ten bad posts is $2,600 in posts alone, holding up panels as weathered as the posts. New sections start to pencil. We price both, side by side; the new-fence side is in our real Lafayette pricing breakdown or the instant estimate.
- Rot along the bottom rail line across the whole fence → replacement territory. When the structure is going everywhere at once, patching chases the failure around the yard. I'll say it plainly; you pick the timeline.
- A storm took out a section and snapped the posts → section rebuild. That's $45 per foot rebuilt on new driven steel, plus $12 a board where only boards went. Old cedar next to new cedar is a color, not a defect.
While the truck's there: if the boards are gray and haven't seen stain in five years, stain and seal is $3.25 per foot, both sides, and it's the cheapest way to make the fence you kept look like the fence you'd have bought.
Storm or slow lean? The insurance question
Plumb Tuesday, leaning Wednesday after a derecho? That's an event, and homeowner's policies commonly cover it under "other structures," minus your deductible. Leaned a little more every spring for six years? That's wear, and no adjuster will call it anything else. Either way the deductible decides: a $575 single-post repair under a $1,000 deductible is a repair, not a claim. When a claim does make sense, we document it — photos, written scope, itemized estimate on letterhead — at no charge. And don't wait on the adjuster to stand a downed section back up so the dog stays in; we do temporary standups and fold the cost into the final repair.
What to photograph
Three pictures get you a number the same day. Four if there's a gate.
- The whole run, from one end. Shoot down the fence line from the corner — the lean, how many posts are in on it, whether the boards are worth keeping.
- The base of the worst post, at grade. Kick the grass back. A collar sitting proud of the dirt is heave; a gap between post and collar is rot; clean wood in loose soil is wind, and good news.
- Where the post meets the rails. Tells me if this is a post job or a post-plus-section job.
- The gate, if it's the gate post. Closed, from the latch side.
Send them through the repair request form with your address, or text them. Repairs run within 20 miles of Lafayette — that covers Lafayette, West Lafayette, and most of the county — with a $95 trip surcharge out to 30. Past that, a local outfit will honestly beat us on a one-post job, and I'll tell you so.
A leaning fence is the one repair where the cheap fix and the right fix are different things, and you find out which one you bought the following March. Pick the one that doesn't come back. – Dave