FIELD NOTES // PLANNING

Before We Dig: Locates And Property Lines

Before digging, confirm the property boundary, arrange and confirm utility locates, and check address-specific restrictions. A boundary survey and a utility locate serve different purposes; neither replaces the other. Resolve the fence position, local requirements and any HOA approval before installation begins.

By Get Your Fence On · JULY 31, 2026 · Updated SEPTEMBER 6, 2026 · 5 MIN READ

Yellow, orange and white utility locate paint marked on pavement

Locate marks on the ground. Yellow is gas, orange is communications, white is the dig area itself - the free 811 request is what puts them there. Illustration only.

Almost every fence problem that turns expensive was decided before the first post hole. Two of them are easy to prevent.

1. Utility locates

Buried utilities get marked before digging. In Missouri that request goes through the state 811 service, and it is free to the homeowner.

A locate has a lead time, so it belongs at the front of the schedule rather than the morning of the build. Note that no-call is not the same as no-locate - if you have not seen paint or flags, ask.

Here is how the request actually works. In Missouri you contact Missouri 811 by phone or online, describe the property and the area you will dig, and the law gives the utilities two working days to come out and mark their lines with paint or flags. The notice has to be filed at least three working days before the digging starts and no more than ten, so a locate placed a week ahead lands in the window, and one placed the night before does not. Kansas runs the same idea through Kansas 811 with a two-working-day lead time and a ticket that stays valid for twenty calendar days. Neither service charges the homeowner anything.

The marks tell you where the public lines run: the gas main to your meter, the electric service, cable, telecom, and water where the district owns it. They do not tell you where your own private lines run - the wire to a detached garage, the pipe to a pool pump, a sprinkler feed, a septic lateral. Those are yours to know about, and if a fence line crosses them the safe move is to hand-dig near them or move the post. A good crew asks that question before the auger comes off the truck; the answer changes the plan more often than people expect.

One habit worth keeping: photograph the marks the day they go down. Paint fades, mowers scatter flags, and a picture on your phone settles any later question about what was marked and where. If the fence line has been staked, look at the stakes next to the paint. Where a post falls on or within a foot or two of a marked line, that post gets dug by hand, slowly, and the schedule already knows it.

Sources: Missouri 811 - Homeowners · Missouri 811 - How the locate process works · RSMo 319.026 - Notice of excavation to the notification center · Kansas 811 - Homeowners · Common Ground Alliance - damage prevention best practices · Missouri Attorney General - Utility and digging safety (One Call Law)

2. Where the line actually is

A fence built on the wrong side of a property line is a legal problem, not a fencing one, and moving it later costs more than building it right.

If you are not certain, find your survey pins or get a survey. Neighbors who agree in conversation have been known to disagree in writing .

Property pins are usually iron rods or capped stakes set at the corners of the lot when it was surveyed, often buried an inch or two under the sod. A cheap metal detector finds most of them. What you cannot do reliably is guess the line from a neighbor's fence, a tree row, or the edge of the mowing, because all three drift over decades and none of them were ever a boundary. County parcel viewers help you orient - Jackson County, Kansas City and Johnson County all publish one - but every one of them says the same thing in the fine print: the lines drawn there are not survey grade.

When the pins cannot be found, or the two neighbors read them differently, a licensed land surveyor sets or confirms the corners and gives you a drawing you can rely on. In Missouri that work follows the state's boundary survey standards, and the surveyor is licensed by the state board, which you can check. The cost of a survey is small next to the cost of taking a fence down and rebuilding it two feet over, which is the usual outcome when a line is disputed after the concrete has cured.

Missouri also has a fence law of its own, in Chapter 272 of the statutes, and MU Extension's guide to it is the plainest explanation you will find. For most residential lots the practical rule is simple: build on your side of the line, or agree with the neighbor in writing before you build on it. A handshake is not a document, and the neighbor who agreed may not be the neighbor who lives there when the fence needs replacing.

Sources: MU Extension G810 - Missouri Fence and Boundary Law Reference Guide · Missouri Standards for Property Boundary Surveys (2021) · Missouri Board for Architects, Professional Engineers, Professional Land Surveyors and Landscape Architects · Jackson County, Missouri Parcel Viewer · Johnson County, Kansas AIMS online mapping · RSMo Chapter 272 - Fences

A site plan and drawing tools laid out on a desk

A drawing is not a boundary. Survey pins, or a licensed survey where the pins are gone, are what settle where a fence may stand. Illustration only.

3. Rules that apply to your address

Some neighborhoods restrict height, material and color, and some require approval before work starts. A city permit may also apply depending on where you are.

If you know the rule, say so early and it can be built to. Finding it out afterwards is the expensive order to do it in.

Rules stack. A city can limit height by yard - front yards are commonly capped lower than side and rear yards, and corner lots carry extra sight-line rules near the intersection. Kansas City , Missouri lists fences as exempt from a building permit but still enforces its fence ordinance; Overland Park requires a permit for a new fence; unincorporated Johnson County has its own threshold. None of those three answers applies to the other two addresses, which is why the first question is always the exact address, not the metro area.

Then there is the layer the city does not enforce: a homeowners' association. Where one exists, its covenants can restrict material, color, style and height beyond what the city allows, and most require written approval before work starts. The approval usually wants a drawing, the material and the height, all things a real estimate already contains. Sending the estimate with the application is the shortest path through.

Get the answers before the quote is final, not after the posts are in. A fence built to a rule you did not know about gets rebuilt at your expense, and the crew that warned you in advance would rather do the reading with you than the rebuilding for you. If you know the rule, say so in the first conversation; if you do not, say that too, and it becomes part of the estimate visit.

Sources: Kansas City, Missouri - Code questions (fence height and placement) · Kansas City, Missouri - Building permit exempt work · Johnson County, Kansas - Building permits · Overland Park, Kansas - Building permits · K-State Research and Extension C663 - Kansas Fence Law

4. The two calls that save the day

Two phone calls before a fence job prevent almost every expensive surprise, and both are free. The first is 811. Three working days ahead in Missouri , two in Kansas , and the utilities come out and paint the ground. We have watched homeowners skip it on a Saturday afternoon and hit a gas service line with a clamshell digger, and what happens next involves the fire department and a very long day for everybody. It is free. It is the law. It takes four minutes online.

The second call is to the neighbor, and it is the one people avoid. Nobody enjoys the conversation about where the line is. But a fence is a permanent object built on a boundary, and the version of this conversation that happens before the concrete cures costs a coffee, while the version that happens afterwards costs a survey, a rebuild and a decade of waving stiffly across the driveway.

The part that surprises people is how often the pins are still there. Iron rods at the corners, an inch or two under the sod, findable with a cheap metal detector in about half an hour. When they are gone, a licensed surveyor sets them and hands you a drawing that ends the argument permanently. Against the cost of moving a finished fence two feet, a survey is not an expense, it is insurance.

And while you are making calls, make the third one: your city or county, and your HOA if you have one. Height by yard, corner-lot sight lines, whether the finished side has to face out, whether anything needs approval before work starts. Ten minutes of asking is the difference between a fence you keep and a fence you rebuild.

Sources: Call 811 - the national call-before-you-dig number · Kansas 811 - locate requests before digging · Common Ground Alliance - damage prevention best practices · Kansas City MO - Code of Ordinances · Jackson County MO - parcel and property records