Elyria, OH Fence Regulations: Material Restrictions (2026)

Section 521.07 of the Elyria General Offenses Code, enacted by the Elyria City Council in Lorain County, Ohio, regulates two fence materials and nothing else. Division (a) is flat: no person can erect or maintain any fence charged with electrical current. The ban has no street-frontage condition and no exception, so it applies to every lot in the City of Elyria.

Division (b) targets barbed wire along public ways. No person can erect or maintain a barbed wire fence which abuts or is adjacent to any public street or sidewalk. The ban reaches both the erecting and the maintaining of a fence, so an existing barbed wire fence next to a street or sidewalk is covered too.

There is one narrow allowance in division (b). It does not prevent the placement and use of not more than two strands of barbed wire on top of a fence other than a barbed wire fence, provided the strands are not less than forty-eight inches from the ground. A chain link or wood fence with a top rail of barbed wire is therefore tested by two numbers: no more than two strands, and none lower than forty-eight inches.

Section 521.07 also leaves barbed wire partition fences to Ohio R.C. 971.03, stating that they can be erected and maintained as provided there. That reference points to the state partition fence statute, which the code does not reprint, so it is not part of this summary.

Height, setback and open-air material rules for ordinary residential fences sit in the Planning and Zoning Code, not in this section, and were not read for this page. This section is a safety rule on materials only, enforced as an offense under the General Offenses Code.