Asheville, NC Fence Regulations: Material Restrictions (2026)

City Code Sec. 16-6 states flatly that no person shall erect, maintain or allow on any premises along any street or alley of the city any barbed wire or barbed wire fence; the rule traces to Code 1965, § 25-9 and carries no zoning-district exception in the streets-and-sidewalks chapter. Separately, the zoning ordinance's fence and wall standards at Sec. 7-10-3(c) restrict electrified security fences: private use is allowed only in the Industrial, Commercial Industrial, and Light Industrial districts, and only to secure outdoor storage areas.

Within the Industrial and Light Industrial districts the fences are allowed by right subject to the special standards at Sec. 7-16-1; in the Commercial Industrial district they require a conditional use permit under Sec. 7-16-2. S. Department of Homeland Security for public security purposes, but nowhere else. Those same zoning standards, at Sec. 7-10-3(a)-(b), cap ordinary fences and walls in front setbacks at six feet (eight feet in side/rear setbacks unless retaining) and bar any fence over three-and-a-half feet inside a required sight-visibility triangle. Read together, a homeowner in a residential district cannot use barbed wire anywhere in the city, and cannot use an electrified fence at all since that option is reserved to industrial and commercial-industrial storage yards, government sites and utilities. The electrified-fence rule was last amended by Ord. No. 4280, § 1, adopted 2-11-14.