Building a Patterned Fence Panel

 Written by: Chad Julius
Each year we continue to see the AB Fence used in residential applications and more and more they are looking for that Ashlar Pattern for ultimate aesthetics.  What is unique about the AB Fence is that each block in modular with dimensional sizes that are full, half length, half high and quarter size.  Therefore, they can be stacked in random patterns.  What makes it even better is that the blocks have different finishes on the front and backs so they can be flipped to create not only random patterns, but also random textures.  

Now let’s face it.  When you are talking random construction that will slow down construction times and increase the expense of the project.  That is why we have created patterns that can be used as guides to increase efficiency.  There are patterns that range in height from 1 course to all the way up to a 4 course pattern.  These patterns can be found in the installation manual or the Pattern Brochure from Allan Block.

The main thing to consider is that we still need to create the structure for the AB Fence for the stability.  Let’s take the example of an 8-ft (2.4 m) fence, which will typically require a bond beam at the top and bottom of the panel.  The full panel height will be 12 courses, but we use multiple pattern options to construct it.

We want to use full panel blocks as the bottom course to speed up installation.  Then a single course pattern is used above that to complete the bond beam structure for blocks.  The top two course are also single course patterns that will be used to construct the top bond beam.  However, the middle is dry-stacked block that needs to be a total of 8 courses in height.  Therefore, we are using one 2-course pattern followed by two 3-course patterns.  The beautiful thing is that the next panel could change up the middle patterns to keep each panel looking random and unique.