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c/fence-erectors•knight.felixknight.felix•9d ago

Shoutout to the crew I saw using a laser level for a long vinyl run

Last week I was driving through a new subdivision in Springfield and saw a crew putting up a long section of vinyl privacy fence. What caught my eye was they had a rotary laser level set up on a tripod about fifty feet down the line. I pulled over to watch for a minute, which probably looked weird, but I had to see. They were using it to set the top rail perfectly level before even hanging a single picket. The foreman told me they started doing it on commercial jobs about three years back and it cut their time on long runs by almost a full day because they never have to go back and adjust sagging rails. I tried it myself on a 150-foot backyard job yesterday and it was a game changer. No more running a string line and having it get bumped. Has anyone else switched to using a laser for setting rails, or do you stick with the old string method?
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4 Comments
ryan_shah38
My buddy’s crew tried a laser after fighting wind with string lines for half a day.
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ivanscott
ivanscott8d ago
Honestly thought it was overkill for residential work until we had a nightmare job on a sloped lot. String lines kept getting knocked by the skid steer. Borrowed a laser from the concrete guys and finished the rail in two hours flat. That one job paid for the laser.
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kelly.charlie
Still seems like a band-aid fix for bad site management. A good crew should be able to protect string lines, even on a slope. Lasers are great, but that's a lot of cash to drop because someone kept driving over your setup.
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jamie940
jamie9408d ago
My crew spent three hours untangling string lines last Tuesday.
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