LESLIE: Alright. Now we’ve got Jane calling in from Center Sandwich, New Hampshire. So, Jane, does that make you guys the filling? Is there a Top and Bottom Sandwich, New Hampshire? (Jane laughs)
JANE: No, we call it Sandwich now. (Tom chuckles) We’ve gotten modern.
LESLIE: (chuckling) Oh.
TOM: Alright.
JANE: Well, my daughter has property in Vermont and it’s being devalued by her neighbor, who has a construction business and has always dumped stuff right on the border of her land. And what I was thinking of – I heard about your black fence, black iron fence, one time when I was listening to your show and I don’t know what that is but I wondered, “Gee, maybe that’s the answer.”
TOM: (overlapping voices) Yes.
JANE: Is there something we can put up there to help the situation? Because it’s really nasty.
TOM: Well, actually, the iron fence idea is one where you want to see through the fence; you want the fence to be invisible. In this case, you want to have a complete visual barrier.
For those that are not familiar with this trick, it’s a very good one if you’re trying to have a fence for safety purposes – say, for example, for like a pool – but you don’t want to be looking at a chain-link or a white-picket fence that’s really, really big, visually speaking. You can put a black, sort of iron fence in and you can put green bushes in front of it and it becomes somewhat invisible.
But in your case, you want to block it so we want to talk about something else to do that. You’re going to want to use, probably, a board-on-board fence. And then, coming off of the fence, you’re going to want to alternate rows of landscaping. So you’re going to want to have bushes – like one row where it begins at the fence; another row about two feet out – and kind of alternate it.
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) Stagger them.
TOM: You’re staggered, right. So you get a nice visual barrier there.
But the other thing that comes to mind, I want to make sure that your daughter can go down to the local municipal authorities and make sure that this construction business is allowed to do the dumping on their property, because there are rules and regulations and laws about that. And I know that some towns, it’s sort of loosey-goosey but the least you should do is figure out whether or not this is something that she has to put up with.
JANE: Yeah. Well, that might be the answer. But they’ve tried different things but it’s the mother, you know, getting involved here. (Leslie and Tom chuckle)
LESLIE: Well, sometimes you have to.
TOM: Jane, thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
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