Chain Link Fence Installation in Kent, WA
Chain link is the fence Kent homeowners buy when the job is containing a dog, closing a side yard, or running a long line on a large lot without spending cedar money on it. Done properly it is also the fence in this climate with nothing on it that can rot.
What Chain Link Costs in Kent
Chain link pricing spreads wider than cedar or vinyl because height, wire gauge, and coating each move it.
Residential chain link in Kent runs about $15 to $28 per linear foot installed for 4-foot galvanized and about $25 to $40 for 6-foot black vinyl-coated. Black coating adds roughly $5 to $8 a foot; privacy slats add more. Gates are priced separately, from about $100 for a walk gate.
Those ranges are compiled from the 2026 price pages of fence contractors serving King County; a Kent-focused installer quotes its own chain link at $40 to $65 a foot, which reflects heavier framework and full-service pricing rather than a different product. Chain link is the one material where a big-box price and a contractor price can differ by half, and the difference is almost always in the posts and the top rail.
Galvanized or black
Bare galvanized is the cheapest and, on a Kent lot with trees behind it, the most visible. Black vinyl-coated wire and framework disappears against a hedge or a greenbelt, and the PVC coating over the zinc adds a second barrier against the wet. On the lots backing onto Clark Lake Park, Lake Fenwick, or the Green River trail, black is what most owners end up choosing once they see both against the trees.
Height and what it is for
Four feet keeps most dogs in and marks a line. Five feet is the usual pick for a dog that has cleared four. Six feet is a security or privacy height and is where slats start being fitted; anything above six feet on a Kent residential lot should be checked against zoning before it is ordered, since the city's building-permit exemption stops at seven and the county's at six.
Privacy Slats and Kent's Definition of a Screen
Kent City Code 15.02.140 sets the minimum for a "sight-obscuring fence" as a chain link fence with woven slats in every row or available space. That definition exists for commercial screening requirements, but it is a useful benchmark for a homeowner: a fully slatted chain link fence is, in the city's own terms, a screen. Slats come in aluminum, vinyl, and hedge-style woven inserts, they add roughly $5 to $15 a foot depending on type, and they load the fence with wind the same way a solid cedar panel does, which means the posts have to be set for it.
A slatted 6-foot chain link fence on the valley floor, where the ground is soft and the winter wind runs up the river, needs the heavier framework a bare fence can skip. If the bid adds slats without changing the post schedule, ask why.
Where Chain Link Earns Its Place on a South King County Lot
- Dog runs and side yards, where nobody is looking at the fence and containment is the whole job.
- Long lines on the larger lots toward Black Diamond and Maple Valley, where a thousand feet of cedar is a car and a thousand feet of chain link is a weekend.
- Behind a hedge or along a greenbelt, where black chain link vanishes and cedar would be maintenance nobody sees.
- Pool and play-area perimeters, where see-through is the point.
- Rental and investment properties on West Hill and in the valley, where the owner wants a fence that needs nothing for twenty years.
How a Kent chain link job runs
- Layout. Line posts every 8 to 10 feet, terminal posts at ends, corners, and gates; the corner-lot sight triangle from Kent City Code 15.08.130 is laid out first if it applies.
- Posts. Terminal posts get larger diameter pipe and bigger footings; line posts are set to depth and left to cure.
- Framework. Top rail, tension bands, and tension bars on the terminals. A fence with no top rail sags into a curve by the second summer.
- Fabric. The mesh is stretched with a come-along, tied to the rail and posts, and any slats are woven in last.