Fence RegulationsSourced to the codeBrowse states
Method

How a finding gets made

267 findings across 40 states, drawn from 231 documents. Every one names the document it came from, quotes the operative words, and carries the date the document was read.

The source ladder

Research starts at the top of this list and stops at the first rung that answers the question. Nothing below the last rung is ever cited: not a law firm page, not a legal directory, not a fence contractor, not another summary site. Those are the things this site exists to replace.

  1. The legislature

    A state statute is taken from the legislature’s own site and nowhere else. That is the text that governs, and every other version of it is somebody’s copy.

  2. The municipal code on its official host

    For a city, the code as published by the city or by the host the city points at. A section number without the document behind it is a citation nobody can check.

  3. An official agency document

    A health department pool rule, a building division bulletin, a permit page. These carry weight, and a finding drawn from one is marked as uncodified so a reader knows it is not in the ordinance.

  4. The department, by phone

    Used to confirm something already found in writing. Never as the only source for a claim.

The quote is checked by machine, on every build

A quote is the part that can go wrong quietly. A word dropped in transcription, a section number that drifted after an amendment, a link that rotted. A person reading five hundred statutes catches those unreliably. A program that fetches the document and looks for the sentence catches them every time.

So the build does exactly that. Every cited document is downloaded, and every quote on the site has to appear in the document it claims to come from, word for word, before the site can be built. A finding whose quote cannot be found does not publish. That is a stronger promise than a review checkbox, and it does not get weaker as the site grows.

Six statuses, because a code does not always answer

Most reference sites model a rule as a number. That breaks the moment a real code is read: the ordinance sets heights and never says what they are measured from, or prints the same rule twice with two different figures, or hands the question to a department standard that is not published anywhere. A model with a required number forces either an invented figure or a blank page. This one has nowhere to put an invented figure.

Stated
The code gives a plain answer, and the line it appears on is quoted.
Conditional
The answer moves with something else, such as lot width or how open the fence is. Every branch is listed.
Conflicting
The code says two different things about the same question. Both are quoted and neither one is picked.
Silent
The documents were read and none of them cover it. The list of what was read is printed with the finding.
Delegated
The code hands the question to a department standard that is not printed in the code.
Superseded
A local rule replaces a higher level default, and both are shown.

A page has to earn its URL

A place gets an indexable page once all 4 of its core topics have been read, at least 2 of them turn up a rule that actually exists, and at least 2 findings are specific to that place rather than inherited from the level above.

The last one is the test that matters. A city page whose only content is state law with the city name dropped into it is a doorway page, and thousands of those drag down the pages that are real. A place that fails it stays a row on the page above instead.

A page that fails the gate still exists at its address and still links out to every document behind it. It carries a noindex tag and stays out of the sitemap, and those two are read from the same function so they cannot disagree.

What this site never does

  • No advice. Pages report what a document says. They do not say what anybody ought to do about their own property. The second person does not appear in page content at all, and a build check fails on you and on your. This sentence is inside a code tag, which is the only reason the build let it through.
  • No invented figures. If a code sets heights and never states a datum, the page says so and cites the chapter. A missing rule reported honestly is more useful than a plausible number nobody wrote.
  • No undated claims. Statutes are amended. Every finding carries the date its document was read, so a reader can judge how fresh it is instead of guessing.
  • No leads, no referrals, no attorney matching. Nothing on this site is sold and nobody is introduced to anybody.