Handyman Services in Smithfield, Utah

Smithfield's first settlers came in 1859 and built cabins from the cottonwoods along Summit Creek. The settlement was first called Summit. In July 1860 the families built a fort with the creek running through it, and that year the town took the name Smithfield City after its first bishop, John G. Smith. In 1864 the fort came down and families moved onto surveyed one-acre lots.

The narrow-gauge Utah Northern Railway reached town in 1873. The next century brought a Del Monte vegetable cannery, a Carnegie library and a high school, and most farmland inside the city has since become neighborhoods. The city's 2026 general plan counts 14,033 residents in 2023, up from 10,832 in 2017, and 4,200 homes, up from 3,196.

A new house on the edge of town needs a fence and a pad for the shed. An older house in the original town site more often needs its doors, porch steps and trim brought back.

Smithfield's zoning code caps fences, walls and hedges at 6 feet in any front, side or rear yard. In the R-1 single-family and RM multiple-family zones, a front-yard fence can be no taller than 4 feet. Commercial lots along Main Street (State Road 91) and 100 North (State Road 218) are held to 4 feet in their front and side setbacks.

Where the ground is higher on one side, height is measured from the average of the finished grades on both sides at the fence line. On top of a retaining wall that holds back fill, the wall counts toward the fence height, though a protective fence up to 48 inches is always allowed along the top.

The city's building permit section exempts fences 6 feet tall or less, and retaining walls up to 4 feet measured from the bottom of the footing unless they hold back extra load. So a standard backyard cedar fence usually needs no building permit here, but it still has to meet the height limits. Blue Stakes of Utah asks for notice at least three business days before any digging, and the locate request is free.

The older part of Smithfield slopes about 3 percent, from 4,880 feet on the east side to 4,500 feet on the west. East of town, the benches along Lake Bonneville's old shoreline approach a 30 percent slope, and slopes in the Canyon Road area run from 20 to 80 percent. The general plan says the East Cache Fault Zone runs along the base of the eastern foothills, and that earthquakes in the region have caused structural damage inside city limits.

Soil changes across town. Silty gravel is most common, but the far north end is silt-clay and clay, and a perched water table under the east bench feeds springs. On the west and southwest side, groundwater sits only a few feet down. Wet clay heaves when it freezes, which is a common reason a fence post leans or a gate stops latching after winter.

The plan gives a temperature range of 100 to minus 30 degrees, with more than half of the 16.6 inches of yearly precipitation falling as snow, and spring melt can flood along Summit Creek and Birch Creek. For a concrete pad, that means a compacted gravel base, control joints and a pour after the ground thaws. For fence and pergola posts, it means concrete footings set below the frost line.