Decks and Fences Before Winter: What September Is For, and What Can Wait

September is the last month when deck and fence work in the Greater Toronto Area gets planned instead of rushed. The ground is still open, coatings still get warm days to cure in, and a permit application submitted now has autumn ahead of it rather than winter. By late October, at least one of those has usually gone. The useful thing to do this month is not to start every job at once. It is to sort them into three piles: the ones that lose their window, the ones that need paperwork before anything gets built, and the ones that are genuinely better in April.

What follows is that sort — with the deck permit thresholds Oakville, Mississauga and Burlington publish, the rules deciding who pays for a fence on a property line, and what the old wood costs to get off your driveway.

What actually loses its window before frost?

Three things: anything that lets water sit on or against wood, anything that needs concrete to cure, and anything that needs a coating to dry. Everything else can survive a winter looking worse than you would like and still be fixable in April.

• Debris packed into the gaps between deck boards. Packed leaves and needles hold water against the board edges all winter and keep the underside from drying. A putty knife or a paint stirrer down each gap clears it; a leaf blower does not move wet packed debris.
• A wobbly rail, a loose stair tread, a rotted post base. These are load-bearing, and snow load is the one thing a deck carries in winter that it never carries in summer.
• A gate that already drags in September. It will not drag less once the post heaves with frost. Fix the hinge or the latch now, or expect it tied shut until April.
• Downspouts discharging onto or under a deck. Water aimed at a deck's footings only becomes visible when it freezes. If you have not followed each downspout to see where it ends, that walk pairs with the sump pump and downspout checks worth doing this month.
• Fence boards or rails that have already let go. A failed section catches wind. Replacing three boards in September is a hand tool job; a whole section blown flat in February is not.

Colour is not on that list. A faded deck looks faded; it is not failing, and treating the fade as urgent is how a stain job ends up happening in November on a surface that never dries.

Does the deck you are planning need a building permit?

Very likely, if it is more than about knee height or it touches the house — and each municipality writes the trigger differently, so a number from the next town over is not usable. Read the row for your own address.

Two rows there decide projects. Oakville's second sentence pulls any attached deck into permit territory at any size, so a small landing off a back door is not automatically exempt. Burlington's patio line runs the other way: if the deck you are replacing is low and failing, a ground-level patio does the same job and skips the permit — the deciding question is whether you need the height to meet a door threshold. Milton and Toronto (Etobicoke) publish their own thresholds; check the page for your address rather than borrowing the town next door's number.

Who pays for a fence that sits on the property line?

Ontario has a process for exactly this, and it is slower than a September deadline. The Line Fences Act "provides a dispute resolution procedure between the owners of adjoining properties in most of Ontario", and it applies in two situations only: where no fence exists at the boundary and one owner wants one built to mark it, or where a line fence exists and one owner believes it "needs to be reconstructed or repaired". The municipality then appoints fence-viewers, and "three fence-viewers are required to be present at a viewing".

Their award is narrow. They are "only authorized" to address the apportionment of responsibility between the two owners and the description of the fence to be built, "including the materials to be used". Read the next line twice before planning around it: "the arbitration procedure only deals with disputes about fences. It does not determine the location of the boundary line between adjoining properties." If you and your neighbour disagree about where the line runs, no fence-viewer settles that. Mississauga says so directly, advising owners to "conduct a survey that indicates ownership of the fence or location of the lot line that will assist in determining who's responsible". A survey has to be ordered and scheduled, which is why this step goes first rather than last.

Municipalities can also step outside the provincial process — a council "has the authority to pass a by-law to exempt all or part of a municipality from the Act". Oakville runs its own Division Fence By-law, which "establishes rules and regulations for determining how the costs of constructing, repairing, or replacing a fence that is located on the property line between adjacent properties is to be shared between property owners", and which "creates a process for the public to independently apply while the municipality remains impartial and does not become directly involved in property line fence disputes". Mississauga states the same posture in plainer words: "any disputes related to the location or price of the fence must be settled between the property owners."

Nobody is coming to referee this quickly. The consequence for September: if a shared fence is going to be replaced before winter and you want the cost split, the conversation with the neighbour happens this month, in writing, with a quote attached. Mississauga publishes sample letters for notifying a neighbour of an intent to build and requesting payment. Starting in mid-October is too late to also get the fence built.

1. 1Establish where the line is before you price anythingLook for survey pins or an existing survey in your closing documents. If there is real doubt, book the survey first — no municipal process will supply that answer.
2. 2Put the proposal to the neighbour in writingDescribe the fence: height, material, who builds it, and the quoted price. A verbal agreement about a shared cost is what falls apart when the invoice arrives.
3. 3Check the height against the by-law before agreeing on a designWhat was there before is not proof of what is allowed now. Limits differ by yard and by municipality, and a corner lot carries extra restrictions.
4. 4Only then set the build dateWith the line settled, the cost agreed and the height confirmed, the carpentry is the short part — and the date a contractor can actually give you constrains everything above it.

Can you rebuild the fence at the height it was?

Not necessarily, and this is worth checking before the old one comes down. Mississauga publishes its limits plainly: a front yard fence is "maximum 1 metre high", or "maximum 1.5 metres high if open construction", while a back or side yard fence is "maximum 2 metres high (excluding hedges, shrubs or trees that act like a fence)". The city also notes that "you may not need a permit to build a fence in most cases" — so nobody checks your height before it goes up, and the by-law still applies afterwards.

Oakville regulates fences under its Fences and Privacy Screen By-law, which covers "how height is calculated", "height and location to minimize impact on visibility triangles on driveways and corner lots", maximum height inside and outside residential zones, and "restrictions on fence materials and construction". Take the number for your yard from the by-law rather than from what the neighbours have built. Note the visibility triangle in particular: it restricts height near driveways and on corner lots, which is a separate limit from the one for the rest of the same fence.

Where does the old deck or fence actually go?

Not to the curb, and not into yard waste. Treated and coated wood from a renovation is not brush, and both regions covering this service area treat construction wood as a drop-off item you deliver yourself. Peel is explicit: "renovation, construction, or demolition materials are not collected from the curb".

Peel's 1.2 m cutting rule is worth reading before you load rather than after. A six-foot fence board is longer than the limit, so a fence coming down in Mississauga gets cut in the yard with the saw already out. Arriving at the CRC with full-length boards means taking them home again.

Leftover stain and sealer are a separate stream and belong at household hazardous waste, not in the garbage. Halton runs a paint and stain reuse depot beside its household hazardous waste depot at the same Milton site, so a half-used can can go to someone else instead of sitting in a shed for another year.

Staining and sealing: the job most likely to be done at the wrong time

This is the one September job with a weather dependency the calendar does not show you. A coating has a minimum application temperature and a minimum dry time printed on the container, and the figure that governs is the overnight low rather than the afternoon high — the film keeps curing after dark, on a surface losing heat to a clear autumn sky. Read the container, then read the forecast for the two nights after the day you plan to work.

The second variable is moisture in the wood, and the check for it costs nothing. Splash a cup of water on several boards — one shaded, one in full sun, since they weather differently. If it beads and sits, the old finish is still shedding water and a new coat has nothing to soak into; that deck needs sanding or stripping, not another coat. If it soaks in and darkens the wood within seconds, the surface is open. Then confirm the wood is dry: after rain, boards need a run of dry days, and autumn mornings leave dew on horizontal surfaces well after sunrise, so a deck that looks dry at eight o'clock often is not.

If the weather will not give you that, the honest answer is to leave the colour until spring and spend September on the structural list at the top of this article. A deck with sound framing and no finish survives a winter without complaint. A deck coated too late can need the coating removed before it can be done properly, which costs more than waiting would have.

What genuinely can wait until spring

Some jobs belong in April on their own merits, whether or not you run out of autumn.

• A full rebuild you have not applied for yet. If the drawings are not drawn, spring is the realistic build season. Use the autumn for the drawings, the permit application and the quotes, so that nothing on the paperwork side is outstanding when the ground opens up.
• Colour and cosmetics. Staining, painting a fence, replacing lattice — none of it protects anything structurally over one winter.
• New plantings tight against a fence line you might replace. Putting shrubs where a contractor needs working room in April is paying twice.
• Board-by-board patching of a fence failing everywhere. Past a few boards you are replacing the fence, which is the conversation in the section above, not a repair.

One thing that should not wait, though it is not carpentry: the walk-around that tells you which pile each job belongs in. Twenty minutes with a notebook, and it is the same walk that feeds the rest of the autumn list. For the shape of the whole year rather than just this month, the month-by-month property calendar lays it out.

Getting a deck you are keeping through a GTA winter

Assume the deck stays as it is. Four things decide how it looks in April.

• Do the gap-clearing again after the last leaf drop, not just once in September. Same principle as clearing eavestroughs: standing debris holds water against a surface built to shed it. If the deck sits under the trees that fill your gutters, the two jobs belong on the same day, and gutter cleaning is the half worth handing to someone with the ladder already up.
• Lift what sits on the boards. Planters, mats and furniture feet leave a footprint that stays wet all winter. Stack the furniture or move it off the deck.
• Shovel with plastic, along the boards. Push in the direction the boards run so the blade does not catch board ends and screw heads.
• Read the de-icer bag before it touches the deck. De-icing products list the surfaces they are approved for, and decking manufacturers publish a care sheet of their own — check both rather than reaching for the bag you use on the driveway. If the deck is the route to a door you must keep passable, plan that before the first storm. Our snow removal work covers driveways and walkways; the deck is usually a homeowner job with a plastic shovel.

Who to hire, and when the answer is nobody

Deck and fence construction is carpentry — a different trade from the crew that mows your lawn or cleans your gutters. What a general property crew is useful for is the work around the structure: clearing beds and the fence line so a contractor can work, hauling brush, and putting the yard back afterwards. That is seasonal cleanup and landscaping work, and it is worth scheduling around the contractor's dates rather than after them.

Several jobs on this page need nobody at all: clearing the gaps between boards, the water-bead test, the walk-around, cutting old fence boards to length before a dump run. Hand tools and an afternoon. Take quotes for the framing, the footings and the fence line, do the rest yourself, and put the money where the skill is. When you do get quotes, ask for the scope in writing and ask what insurance the contractor carries before work starts. What those words mean, and what a homeowner can verify, is set out in what "insured" and WSIB coverage mean when you hire.