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Spilt Rail Fence

How far away does a spilt rail fence need to be from a driveway? I am mainly concerned about damage during the winter time with snow plowing creating a bank on the fence. Thank you!

How much snow do you get? Around me more than 6 inches happens but its less usual for snow to pile up and not melt between big snows so we don’t get those giant plow piles like when I was in Western Mass. I’d estimate 8 feet is plenty. For “average” snow country.

Where are you? How much snow is question one. Question two: do you leave where the snow is usually heavy slush (New England) or powder? In any case, for a driveway, I would say that four feet is ample in most US climates. Unless you are pushing snow up against the fence. That is to say, is the fence parallel to the drive? Then four feet is more than enough. If the fence is perpendicular to the drive and the plow is pushing up against it, you may need more space.

Here in coastal New England with split rail fence along lots of driveway. There are places where topography or old trees require the fence line to be back from the asphalt driveway, but in general the setback is a little more than my mower deck (52”). It’s really not big a snow problem most of the time.

So having said a once a plow slipped off the driveway in an ice storm and cracked a post. And the year we got 110 inches of snow it was hard to keep the driveway open enough for a car to get through (no fault of the split rail) and the horses got creative and walked out of the paddock over the fence. (Only once. We fixed that by plowing a space in each paddock for them. )