ICE said:
This has been an issue for me once. It was a guard around an atrium at several floor levels. The posts were 2" re-bar and there was cable strung between them. I use a tape measure and fingers. If I push on the cable and it moves, there may be a problem. It has been a while since the cable guard but as I recall, they had to double up the number of cables. So what's that got to do with this post about an aluminum guard. Shirley not a lot.
You say there are 3/4" pickets. 3/4"x what? Give us a picture. You know, there is usually more to the story. You've been building fences for 25 years....... certainly you have 4" balls. You did say that the inspector is gentle so if you pull out your set he probably won"t bust your balls.
ICE look at the OP's response, at the bottom he gave you 4 or 5 manufactures of which he is and has been using,(Dan if you can what manufacture and model fence panel did you use?) if you go to any of the listed manufactures websites you will see hundreds of pictures of what he is talking about as practically every fence panel section is mass produced and specified as 3-7/8" spacing between vertical pickets. He is not installing a custom fabricated product, 95% of the fence companies make nothing, they buy a mass produced product that the manufacture has built to compliance and install it.
But here are a few links:
http://www.ameristarfence.com/
http://www.jerith.com/
Not really more to a story, I have personally run in to this more than a few times, the difference is ICE you are the inspector thus how many times to you install something and have to have it inspected by someone?
As a fabricator and installation company we work all over, last year we worked on projects that were in approximately 185 different AHJ with 185 different inspectors with 185 different views.
You work in one, your view. The main difference I have over Dan is we custom build each of our products and i attend ICC code hearings and stay up on the codes because we manufacture, as basically just an installation company, Dan relies on that the multi million dollar manufactures he buys his product from do that for him, he just orders product "A" that shows in the specs it complies with 4" sphere rule, height and ground spacing.
The odd thing here that I just can't seem to grab is that in the concrete jungle you have not seem to run into a product that has about 70% of the commercial fencing market for the past 15 years.
I think you are just getting hung up of Jeff's use of colorful directional wording.
Don't take a side comment on the presented description, I think why Jeff got so colorful is that with the mass produced aluminum fence panels these manufactures products are produced to maximum specifications, thus 3-7/8" and are approved for use by certified testing labs that they meet the code specifications. The describe presented fact by the OP is the use of a none 4" sphere and force, if that is not the true case then everyone here will agree, if the fence is not to spec it fails.
But in the OP's response he notes he showed the inspector other mass produced fence panels that are installed in millions of installations around the country and this inspector will fail all of them because he can push a less than 4" foam sphere through all of them.
I will have to say the odds that the OP is off based with posting this type of specific information compared against the odd's that one inspector is failing manufactured fence panels, I would have to say the OP is more than likely in the right than the inspector. But I am 1,300 miles from South florida and I am guessing you are about 2 time plus that from SoCal.
I would have to say the fact that the inspector has gone this far is getting well beyond busting balls... The tape measure reads 3-7/8" and the sphere stays put in place, push sphere between verticals and stays in place without pressure.
So a smaller than 4" sphere stays in place, let me think harder,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,common ICE I believe if faced with the same situation you would have gone green and been on to the next headache.....