THUMBVersion 1.1 · 11 September 2026 · 2026–27 season · PDF · v1.0 (4 September 2026) applies to orders invoiced under it
Seasonal Service Terms
How these terms work. Your Order Summary — printed on your invoice and stated in our confirmation to you — records your service address, service type, measured footage, material, layout, site rating, mount spec, your burial choice, your install week, and your price. These Terms are the rules that go with it. Paying your invoice, in whole or in part, accepts your Order Summary and these Terms. If anything in your Order Summary looks wrong, tell us before you pay and we will fix it; nothing is final until the payment lands. Prefer to sign something? Say so — a paper copy or an electronic signature is always available, and either counts the same as payment.
1. What we are doing for you
Your Order Summary names one of three services:
- Rent the fence — we do everything (Renta-Fence). We bring our fence, put it up before hard frost, take it down in spring, and store it in our barn all summer. You never touch it. The fence and posts stay ours.
- You own the fence — we do the labor (Tend). Same schedule, up in fall and down in spring, using your fence — as long as it can survive the winter. We look it over at install and tell you straight if sections will not make it. If your fence comes up short of the confirmed footage, we supply 50-ft rolls at the price in your Order Summary, and those rolls become yours. Summer storage in our barn is an option, priced on the rate card.
- Buy your own fence from us. Materials plus first-season service, priced in your Order Summary.
2. What the season price covers
One price covers your whole season. Already in your price: putting the fence up in fall (mounted to the spec we set for your site — section 5) · taking it down in spring · one storm re-set, on us · storage, if your service type includes it. Only if it happens: deep sand burial at removal — handled the way you chose in section 5 · extra service visits beyond the included re-set, $95 each · replacement rolls for your own fence, $85 installed. That is the complete list. Nothing else appears on your invoice — except sales or use tax, if the State requires it (section 7).
3. How the number is settled
Your Order Summary locks in your price per foot and, once we have walked your property, your measured footage. We do not bill from the sky: before install we walk the fence line with you, measure it, and confirm the footage together. If your Order Summary was issued from an aerial estimate, the confirmed footage replaces the estimate at the same per-foot rate, and your balance adjusts to the confirmed total; if it was issued after the walk-through, the footage on it is the measured number. Want more fence while we are out there — a return along the driveway, a second run, an extra line? Same per-foot rates, added on the spot.
4. Where the fence goes
The plan in your proposal is best practice applied to a plan. Where the fence actually stands is set at the site survey, by the ordinary high-water mark, and by the beach as we find it on install day. Three ground rules:
- The State's line. The fence stays landward of Michigan's ordinary high-water mark (EGLE Part 325 — 580.5 ft IGLD85 on Lake Huron). Knowing where that is: our job.
- Your land. By ordering, you confirm the fence sits on land you own or control. Where the county plats the beach as a separate parcel, we confirm whose it is before the first post is driven.
- Buried utilities. We call MISS DIG (811) before a single post is driven. Also our job.
If machines ever need to reach your beach (a spring dig-out, for instance), we agree the route with you at the walk-through and note it in your Order Summary.
5. If sand buries the fence — the part people misremember
Why it happens: a snow fence on a beach builds a dune. That is the job. Some winters the dune grows right up the fence and buries its base — the fence did not fail, it worked overtime. So before winter, your Order Summary records how a buried fence gets handled.
Your site rating — LOW, MODERATE or HIGH — is set together at the walk-through, standing in your yard, not from a map. History beats the map: a spot that has buried a fence before rates at least MODERATE, and a fence placed to catch sand rates HIGH by design.
The mount. How high the fabric sits on the posts is set by what your fence is for, and your Order Summary records it. Where the job is keeping sand off your yard — MODERATE or HIGH sites, or any spot that has buried a fence before — we mount the fabric high on the posts, no extra charge. It looks odd, like the fence is up on stilts. That gap is doing the work: wind accelerates through it and scours the base clear, so the dune builds downwind of the fence instead of over it — more fence above the sand in spring, less digging on your bill. Where the job is catching sand — a low spot you want filled, a dune you want built — the fabric goes on the sand with no gap under it, because sand travels in the bottom inches of the air and a gap would let most of it straight through; a fence set that way is expected to bury, and it is rated and priced that way. If you would rather have the fabric set differently from the spec we set for your site — your property, your call, and we install it your way — flat Protection is not available and burial is handled on the metered basis only, same rates, same cap. That choice is recorded in your Order Summary.
Your burial choice is ONE of these two, recorded in your Order Summary:
- Cover it now — Dig-Out Protection, one fixed price. Buried removal is covered in full, whatever the winter does. The fee is set by your site rating and the length of your fence: $45 (LOW) · $165 (MODERATE) · $295 (HIGH) per 200 ft of fence, pro-rated by the foot above 200 ft — a fence of 200 ft or less pays the flat figure once; 300 ft at HIGH, for example, is $442. Available with the mount spec we set for your site in place. Our recommendation anywhere a fence has been buried before, and on every fence built to catch sand.
- Pay only if it happens — by the measured foot. Before we dig, we measure the buried footage and photograph the tape — you see the evidence before you see a bill. Light burial (sand 6–18 inches up the fence): $1.50 per buried foot, $95 minimum. Deep burial (over 18 inches, machine work): $3.50 per buried foot, $350 minimum. Your cap, in writing: never more than $750 per 200 feet of fence, pro-rated by the foot above 200 ft — $1,125 for 300 ft.
Whose fence, whose risk. If you rent our fence and we break it getting it out of the sand, that is our problem and our cost. If it is your own fence (Tend), digging out a buried fence can destroy buried sections, and we will not promise otherwise — sections damaged during dig-out are not replaced or credited. Replacement wood rolls are $85 each, installed at the next visit.
What to expect from a working fence. A 4-ft fence of open slat drops its sand on the lee side: the pile crests 4–8 ft downwind and runs out to about 40 ft. Anything of yours inside that zone — a walkway, stairs, a deck at the foot of the wall — can take sand in a big year. Where your plan puts something of yours inside it, your Order Summary says so, and clearing it at spring takedown is part of the service. Where the fence is built to catch sand, the sand it catches stays on your beach at takedown: we take the fence out, and moving the sand where you want it is a separate job, quoted when we can see how much there is.
6. What winter looks like
Your price is for the season, not the snowfall. A mild winter does not earn a refund, and a brutal one does not cost you extra — the fence is there for whichever one shows up. Install and removal ride the weather, not the calendar. We install ahead of hard frost and remove once spring settles, working in route order — we tell you your install week, and if weather moves it, you hear from us by text or email. If a storm knocks the fence around mid-winter, the first re-set is already in your price. Visits beyond that are $95 each. Everything comes out before Memorial Day.
7. Your total, your deposit, and how you pay
Your Order Summary shows your all-in total as plain arithmetic: season price, less any credit, plus Dig-Out Protection if you chose it. Nothing about sand can change a covered total; a metered total changes only by the measured burial charge, never more than the written cap.
Deposit: half of your all-in total — Protection included, if you chose it — holds your place on the calendar — slots go first come, first scheduled. The balance is due the day we install. You may pay the whole season at once instead; your Order Summary then shows nothing due at install.
Pay however suits you: Venmo (@thumbfence — put your service address in the payment note) · check to Thumb Fence Co. LLC · bank transfer or card through the Square invoice we email you. Card and bank payments carry no surcharge.
Tax. Prices do not include Michigan sales or use tax. If the State requires tax on this service, it is added to your invoice at the statutory rate — the State's charge passing through, not a price increase from us.
8. If you change your mind
- More than 14 days before your install week: full deposit back, no questions asked.
- Inside 14 days: we refund half the deposit. By then your slot has been held on the route all season and it is too late to offer it to anyone else — the other half covers the spot you reserved.
- After the fence is in: the season price is earned and non-refundable. Most of the work happens at install, and your spring takedown is already committed either way.
9. What we are responsible for — and what no fence can promise
We are insured. Thumb Fence Co. LLC carries commercial general liability insurance — $1,000,000 per occurrence — through Next Insurance US Company, policy #NXT9YV3K9X-00-GL, in force through 08/09/2027. Want the certificate? Ask and we will send it.
And we are straight about the limits. A snow fence reduces drifting; no fence eliminates it. We are not responsible for damage from drifting or blowing snow or sand that the fence did not stop, and we are not responsible for what the lake itself does — ice shove, storm surge, erosion. Nobody sells protection from Lake Huron; we sell a fence that tilts the odds in your yard's favor.
10. Staying in touch
Most of this service happens when you are not standing there — install weeks shift with the frost, storms move schedules, spring takedown gets planned while you are still downstate. We reach you the way you told us to in your Order Summary. Texts are opt-in only: we send service texts — scheduling, install and removal updates, storm notices — only to a number whose owner has told us in writing that texts are welcome; paying an invoice is not that permission. Message and data rates may apply; reply STOP any time and we stop.
11. The paperwork, plainly
Your proposal, your Order Summary, our written confirmation, your payment record and these Terms together are the whole agreement between us for the season; nothing said elsewhere changes them unless it is written into a new Order Summary. Michigan law applies. For an order of $1,000 or more we also ask for a one-line written acceptance — an email or text saying "confirmed" is enough — before the invoice goes out. These Terms carry a version and date; the version on your invoice is the one that applies to your season, and any later version applies only to later orders. If you would rather have a signature — yours or ours — on any of this, ask, and we will bring the paper.
Rate card, 2026–27 season (as of 11 September 2026 — your Order Summary governs)
| Service | Season base | Per foot, wood slat | Per foot, poly mesh | Minimum |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rent the fence (Renta-Fence) | $150 | $4.00 | $3.00 | $350 |
| You own the fence (Tend) | $120 | $2.65 | $2.40 | $250 |
| Single 50-ft section, rented | — | — | — | $350 flat |
Extras: summer storage of your own fence $50/season · extra service visit $95 · replacement wood roll $85 installed · Dig-Out Protection $45 / $165 / $295 per 200 ft of fence by site rating, pro-rated by the foot above 200 ft · metered burial $1.50 or $3.50 per buried foot, minimums $95 / $350, cap $750 per 200 ft, pro-rated the same way · Founding Forty (deposit by 30 September 2026): $100 off a rental of 100 ft or more, $50 off a 50-ft section, 2027 rate lock, first pick of install week; owners of their own fence get the rate lock, first pick and free first-year storage instead of a credit.
Thumb Fence Co. LLC · PO Box 673, Port Austin, MI 48467 · (989) 658-0086 · thumbfenceco@gmail.com · thumbfence.com · FEIN 42-4288273