Valley Center Fence Installation

Valley Center draws a clean line between its two permit tracks, and fences fall on the zoning side. The city's building permit covers construction, additions, remodels, roofing, siding, windows, pools, decks and demolition. Its zoning permit covers fences, sheds and signage. If someone tells you a Valley Center fence needs a building permit, they are describing the wrong form.

Zoning permits are administered by the Community Development Department at City Hall, 121 S. Meridian, Valley Center, KS 67147, phone (316) 755-7310. The application will not get far without a site plan or map of the proposed project — the city says so on the form itself. A simple scaled sketch showing the lot, the house, the platted easements and the intended fence line is what the reviewer is looking for.

Because the review is a zoning review, the questions it answers are about placement and height rather than construction method. Ask the department for the maximum height in your zoning district and for the vision triangle dimensions at your corner when you submit; the ordinance addresses both, but the governing tables are not published in a form a homeowner can reliably read from a phone.

The ordinance defines a fence at Section 17.02.09 as a free-standing structure of customary materials such as metal, masonry, glass, plastic or wood. The same section, under screening, sets a specific range: where fencing is used for screening it must be not less than six nor more than eight feet high. That is a screening standard rather than a general residential limit, so do not read it as permission to build eight feet on an ordinary back line.

Section 17.03.30 lists the obstructions permitted in required yards and includes fences among them, which is the provision that lets a fence sit inside a setback at all. Section 17.03.37 governs the vision triangle, the triangular area at a street intersection kept clear so drivers can see. Section 17.04.04 is the R-1A single-family residential district, where most Valley Center homes sit and where the applicable lot and yard dimensions are set.

Valley Center is a Sedgwick County suburb north of Wichita in the Little Arkansas River valley, and its USD 262 school district also reaches Park City and Kechi. Newer platted additions here generally carry covenants, and homeowners associations commonly require written approval before a fence goes up. That approval is separate from the city's zoning permit; having one does not satisfy the other. Read your plat for utility and drainage easements at the same time, because a fence built over one can be dismantled by whoever holds it and put back at your expense.

On wind and ground, the National Weather Service office in Wichita records an average annual wind speed of 11.5 mph over the 1991-2020 normals with a prevailing south-southwest direction, and a record gust of 102 mph at Wichita Eisenhower National Airport on June 17, 2025. The footing depth used across Wichita and Sedgwick County is MABCD's frost line of 24 inches below finish grade. Kansas 811 requires at least two full business days' notice before any excavation, and post holes count.