The Renta-Fence Blog · The Whole Property

Not Just the Lakefront: Driveways, Barns, and the Rest of Your Lot

Thumb Fence Co. · Port Austin, Michigan

When people hear "snow fence," they picture the beach side of a shoreline house. Fair enough — that's the windiest spot in the county, and it's most of what we do. But wind doesn't only work the beach. Anywhere wind crosses open ground, it's carrying snow, and it will drop that snow at the first thing that slows it down. Usually that's the exact spot you need to keep clear.

The long driveway problem

A driveway with an open field beside it is a snow trap — the field is the lake, just with corn stubble instead of water. Wind runs across a quarter mile of flat ground, hits the cut of your driveway, slows down, and unloads. That's why some driveways in the Thumb drift shut every single windy day, even miles from shore.

The fix is the same physics as the beach: a run of fence set upwind, out in the grass, so the drift builds harmlessly in the field. One line of fence along the right stretch can be the difference between a driveway you plow after storms and one you fight all winter.

Around buildings and the stuff that can't get buried

• Pole barn doors. Big sliding doors face big open yards, and drifts pack against them until they freeze to the ground in January. A short fence run keeps the apron clear so the door still moves in January.
• Propane tanks. Your delivery driver needs to reach the tank, and buried regulators and vents are a genuine safety problem — not just a hassle.
• Walkways and doors. The path to the door, the steps, the spot where the mail carrier stands — small fence, big difference.
• Wellheads, generators, and dog runs — anything that has to stay reachable in February.

Second row counts too

You don't need waterfront for wind. Second-row homes sit behind the first row's wind shadow in some directions and wide open in others — and inland places with a field on the west side often drift worse than the beach houses do. If your winter problem is wind-built drifts, you're who this service is for, shoreline deed or not.

The classic fifty-footer

Around the Thumb, one roll of snow fence is its own tradition — fence comes in 50-foot rolls, and plenty of jobs need exactly one: across a driveway mouth, in front of the barn doors, alongside the propane tank. If that's you, it's the simplest thing we sell: a single 50-ft section, $350 flat, wood or poly. Same full service as the big shoreline runs — installed before frost, gone in spring, stored in our barn, storm re-set included.

And if you already own a roll — bought from us, the farm store, or your dad thirty years ago — we'll tend it: our crew installs it before frost and removes it in spring for $250 flat on a 50-ft section ($120 season base + $2.65/ft on longer runs). Add $50 and it lives in our barn all summer instead of yours.

One property, one plan

When we build your proposal from the aerial imagery, we're looking at the whole lot anyway — where the wind comes from, where the open ground is, and where the snow wants to land. If we see a driveway or an outbuilding that's going to be a problem, we'll draw that line on the same proposal and price it, and you can take it or leave it. No pressure; it's just cheaper to say yes while the crew and the posts are already there.

And if you want the property fully handled, just say so — we work with trusted local cleanup and landscaping crews and will connect you when we book your fence. One call, whole property, no phone tag.

Put your fence up yourself? We'll dig it out.

Every spring, shoreline DIY fence ends up entombed in the dune it built — and digging it out by hand is a brutal weekend. We bring a mini-excavator instead. Dig-outs are metered by how buried the fence actually is, measured with photos before we start: most jobs land between $500 and $900. The April route fills first-come. And if you never want to think about it again, our seasonal rental customers have removal capped at $750 in the contract — whatever the winter did.