FENCE RULES – BULLITT (COUNTY), KENTUCKY
OVERVIEW
Residential fences are permitted on private property within Bullitt County, subject to local regulations. This page applies to properties in the unincorporated areas of Bullitt County; incorporated municipalities such as Shepherdsville, Hillview, Lebanon Junction, and Mount Washington may regulate fences under their own ordinances.
Bullitt County does not publish a single consolidated residential fence code. Local fence rules appear in the Bullitt County Zoning Regulations, the Building Permit / Zoning Compliance guidance from Bullitt County Planning and Development, the Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance No. 16-05, stormwater and land-disturbance ordinances, and overlay materials where a property is inside a regulated overlay or SmartCode area.
This page focuses on typical single-family residential fencing. If the jurisdiction’s adopted materials do not state a specific limit or requirement, this page notes that the code does not specify one.
Compiled From Bullitt County Planning and Development building-permit and zoning-compliance guidance, the Bullitt County Zoning Regulations, Bullitt County Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance No. 16-05, Bullitt County Ordinance No. 20-11, Bullitt County Post-Construction Stormwater Runoff Ordinance No. 13-11, Bullitt County subdivision and overlay materials, and Kentucky statewide utility-safety baseline materials as of June 2026.
GOVERNANCE
Bullitt County Fiscal Court is the county legislative authority. Local zoning administration is handled through Bullitt County Planning and Zoning, which provides zoning classifications, floodplain determinations for unincorporated county property, building permits, zoning compliances, site-plan review, subdivision review, address assignments, zoning-violation investigation, and administrative support for the Bullitt County Joint Planning Commission and Joint Board of Adjustments.
Bullitt County Building and Safety issues building-related permits and performs inspections for work subject to applicable building-code review. Bullitt County Department of Code Enforcement administers land-disturbance, EPSC, and stormwater enforcement under the county’s stormwater ordinances.
For residential fences, the controlling local rule structure is split across several layers:
• Ordinary Fence Placement and Visibility: The zoning regulations control required front yards, corner visibility, and placement of fences, walls, hedges, and vegetation.
• Permit and Inspection Administration: The county’s Building Permit / Zoning Compliance guidance gives the direct fence permit and inspection thresholds.
• Floodplain and Stormwater Context: Floodplain, stormwater, land-disturbance, and watercourse rules apply when fence work occurs in a regulated floodplain, watercourse, stormwater facility, common plan of development, or larger sitework project.
• Overlay or SmartCode Context: The KY 245 Tourism Overlay and the Mt. Washington SmartCode add separate design or material standards only where those mapped or approved districts apply.
PERMIT AND APPROVAL REQUIREMENTS
• Fences Under 6 Feet: Fences less than 6 feet do not require a permit from Bullitt County Planning and Zoning, but they still must conform to easement requirements, setback requirements, and applicable sight distances.
• Fences Greater Than 7 Feet: Inspections are required for all fences greater than 7 feet in height. Bullitt County does not publish a separate ordinary residential fence-permit workflow for fences from 6 feet through 7 feet in the official source materials reviewed for this page.
• Zoning Compliance: Even when a fence does not require a local fence permit, Bullitt County’s published guidance still requires compliance with easements, setbacks, and sight distances.
• Sitework and Land Disturbance: A sitework permit is required for grading, excavation, filling, removal of soil, or paving on any lot or parcel in excess of 1 acre. Bullitt County’s EPSC and post-construction stormwater ordinances exclude ordinary installation of fences, signs, telephone poles, electric poles, and similar posts or poles from the defined land-disturbance activity, but larger grading, fill, drainage alteration, or development work may still trigger land-disturbance, EPSC, stormwater, or KPDES review.
• Floodplain Development: Work in a Special Flood Hazard Area may require floodplain development review under Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance No. 16-05. The ordinance treats a fence as an obstruction when it is placed in, along, across, or projecting into a watercourse in a way that may alter, impede, retard, or change the direction or carrying capacity of floodwater or water flow.
• Road Access and Encroachment: Bullitt County publishes an encroachment process for new and existing private access or driveway entrances off state and county roads. That access process is separate from the ordinary fence rule, but it may matter where fence work is connected to a driveway entrance, private access point, gate, culvert, or road-frontage improvement.
• Pools: Inground pools require a building permit. A fence used as part of a regulated pool, spa, or hot-tub barrier may be reviewed differently from an ordinary yard fence.
FENCE PLACEMENT RULES
• Required Front Yards: In any required front yard, a fence or wall may not materially impede vision across the yard above 30 inches.
• Other Yards and Yard Edges: Except in required front yards, fences, walls, and hedges are permitted in a yard or along the edge of the yard.
• Property Lines: The ordinance does not state a setback requirement for standard residential fences from property lines; however, fences must be located entirely on the owner’s property and must not encroach into rights-of-way or easements.
• Easements and Setbacks: Bullitt County’s permit guidance states that fences that do not require a Planning and Zoning permit still must conform to applicable easement, setback, and sight-distance requirements.
• Corner and Through Lots: For corner lots, at least one full required front yard must be provided, and a second front yard of at least one-half the generally required front-yard depth must be provided on the other frontage. For through lots with two opposite frontages, front yards are required on all frontages unless the prevailing front-yard pattern supports a different administrative determination.
• Right-of-Way Measurement: Required front-yard depths and side yards for corner lots are measured from the road right-of-way line. For this measurement, no local road is treated as less than 50 feet wide, and no major state road is treated as less than 60 feet wide. If an official state or county detailed plan establishes a right-of-way for widening or relocation, that established right-of-way applies.
• Common Residential Front-Yard Depths: In the posted residential zoning districts, R-1 uses a 50-foot front yard from the right-of-way line, R-2 uses a 40-foot front yard, and R-3 uses a 30-foot front yard. R-4 individual mobile homes follow R-3 requirements, while mobile-home parks have separate street, spacing, and park-layout standards.
• Agricultural, Conservation, and Stream Valley Areas: In the A Agricultural Zone, the published yard restriction is a 40-foot setback from the right-of-way line for buildings. The C Conservation Zone and SR Stream Valley Reserve Zone use the A-zone setback and yard requirements. In SR areas, permanent development near level land bordering a river or stream is generally addressed separately from ordinary yard fencing.
• Floodplain and Watercourse Placement: In a mapped floodplain, floodway, or watercourse area, fence placement may be reviewed as development or as an obstruction if it affects flood flow, stream channels, drainage, or carrying capacity.
• Stormwater Facilities: Ordinary fence-post installation is excluded from Bullitt County’s land-disturbance definition, but fence work connected to a detention basin, stormwater-control facility, drainage channel, common plan of development, or larger graded site may be reviewed with that stormwater or land-disturbance work.
• Utility Safety: Kentucky law requires notice through Kentucky 811 before excavation where Kentucky’s underground utility damage-prevention law applies. For fence projects that involve digging, including fence post holes, notice must be given not less than two full working days and not more than 10 full working days before excavation begins, unless a different future start date is allowed by law. Kentucky locate requests are valid for 21 calendar days from the initial request. Kentucky law also includes exemptions, including certain agricultural tilling and certain nonmechanized excavation on private property where no operator right-of-way or easement is encroached.
FENCE HEIGHT AND VISIBILITY RULES
• Countywide Maximum Height: The code does not specify a countywide maximum height for ordinary residential fences outside site-specific overlay, SmartCode, floodplain, stormwater, or approval conditions.
• Permit / Inspection Height Thresholds: Fences less than 6 feet do not require a permit from Bullitt County Planning and Zoning. Fences greater than 7 feet require inspections. The 7-foot figure is not published as a countywide maximum fence height.
• Required Front Yards: In any required front yard, a fence or wall may not materially impede vision across the yard above 30 inches.
• Planned Unit Developments: In a Planned Unit Development requiring site-plan review, the Planning Commission may permit fences, walls, or hedges above 30 inches in the front yard when the site and buildings are designed to accommodate the enclosure, or when the enclosure is required as a condition of approval.
• Residential Corner Lots: On a corner lot in any residential district, nothing may be erected, placed, planted, or allowed to grow in a way that materially impedes vision between 2.5 feet and 10 feet above the centerline grades of intersecting streets. The regulated area is bounded by the intersecting street centerlines for 90 feet from their point of intersection and the diagonal line connecting those endpoints. Existing trees may remain only if no branches are closer than 6 feet to the ground.
• Sight Distances: Bullitt County’s current permit guidance independently requires fences to conform to applicable sight distances, even when a fence is below the county’s local no-permit threshold.
• SmartCode Areas: Where the Mt. Washington SmartCode applies within an approved Community Plan, side- and rear-yard fences must be between 3 feet and 7 feet in height. Streetscreens must be between 3 feet and 8 feet in height and may be replaced by a hedge or fence by waiver.
• KY 245 Tourism Overlay: Within the KY 245 tourism corridor buffer area, fences are permitted as allowed by zoning §4.308, but the overlay adds material and height conditions for specified fence types.
MATERIAL AND CONSTRUCTION LIMITS
• Ordinary Residential Fences: The general Bullitt County fence section does not specify a countywide list of permitted or prohibited materials for ordinary residential fences.
• Finished Side / Orientation: The code does not specify a finished-side or orientation rule for ordinary residential fences.
• Barbed Wire / Electric Fence: The code does not publish a countywide residential rule for barbed-wire or electric fences in the standard fence section.
• KY 245 Tourism Overlay: In the KY 245 tourism corridor buffer area, chain-link fences must be vinyl coated. The overlay specifically permits three-board and four-board wood fences, sometimes called horse fences, and stone or masonry fences less than 4 feet in height within the tourism corridor buffer area.
• Mt. Washington SmartCode Areas: Where the Mt. Washington SmartCode applies, fences facing frontages must be wood or metal pickets. Elsewhere, fences may be closed wood boards, masonry, trellis, lattice, hedge, or a combination of those materials, and fences may have brick or stone piers. Garden walls must be stone, brick, or stucco, and gates in garden walls must be wood or metal.
• Stormwater Basins: For covered stormwater runoff-control facilities, fencing may be required when warranted by the location of a detention basin. That is a stormwater-facility condition, not a countywide ordinary yard-fence material rule.
• Floodplain and Watercourse Conditions: In a floodplain, floodway, or watercourse context, a fence may be reviewed for whether it acts as an obstruction or encroachment. The floodplain ordinance does not convert that review into a standard residential fence material list.
PRIVATE RESTRICTIONS
Private restrictions operate independently from Bullitt County’s public zoning, permit, stormwater, and floodplain rules. A residential fence may also be controlled by HOA covenants, subdivision restrictions, deed restrictions, private easements, stormwater maintenance easements, maintenance covenants, recorded access agreements, agricultural agreements, or other private property restrictions.
Private restrictions may be more restrictive than the county’s public rules. Bullitt County’s public approval or no-permit status does not remove private restrictions unless an official source or recorded private document provides otherwise.
REVIEW AND ENFORCEMENT CONTEXT
Fence issues are typically reviewed during permit or approval review when required, and through complaint-based code enforcement. Examples include:
• Permit Thresholds: Whether a fence is less than 6 feet, greater than 7 feet, or otherwise subject to a separate building, zoning, inspection, floodplain, pool, stormwater, or overlay review.
• Required Front-Yard Visibility: Whether a fence or wall in a required front yard materially impedes vision above 30 inches.
• Corner-Lot Visibility: Whether a fence, wall, hedge, plant material, or other object on a residential corner lot materially impedes the 2.5-foot to 10-foot visibility zone within the 90-foot intersection area.
• Easements, Setbacks, and Sight Distances: Whether the fence conforms to applicable easements, setbacks, rights-of-way, and sight-distance limitations.
• Road Access or Encroachment: Whether the fence is connected to a driveway, private access point, gate, culvert, or road-frontage improvement requiring separate access or encroachment review.
• Floodplain / Watercourse Review: Whether a fence in a Special Flood Hazard Area, floodway, stream corridor, or watercourse functions as development, an obstruction, or an encroachment.
• Land Disturbance and Stormwater: Whether the fence is ordinary post installation, which is excluded from the land-disturbance definition, or part of a larger graded, filled, drained, or common-plan development site that triggers EPSC or stormwater review.
• Overlay and SmartCode Conditions: Whether the property lies in the KY 245 Tourism Overlay, an approved Mt. Washington SmartCode Community Plan area, a Planned Unit Development, or another site-specific approval area with additional fence standards.
• Pool-Barrier Use: Whether the fence is being used as part of an inground pool or other regulated pool, spa, or hot-tub barrier.
USING THIS INFORMATION
This page provides general orientation on how residential fence rules are structured and applied within Bullitt County, based on publicly available source materials reviewed as of June 2026.
In addition to local fence rules, certain Kentucky laws apply statewide. See Statewide Fence Laws in Kentucky.
It is not legal advice and does not replace official ordinances, permits, surveys, or professional guidance. Rules and interpretations may change, and application may vary based on zoning district, site conditions, easements, rights-of-way, floodplain status, stormwater or drainage requirements, road or highway encroachment, historic district status, rural or agricultural context, livestock or farm-boundary context, pool-barrier use, and private restrictions such as HOA covenants, deed restrictions, private agreements, or agricultural conservation easements. Before purchasing materials or beginning construction, confirm current requirements and any site-specific limitations with Bullitt County Planning and Zoning and any applicable private agreements. If this page conflicts with official ordinances, published guidance, or direction from Bullitt County staff, the official sources control. For legal advice or legal interpretation, consult a licensed attorney.