Mailbox questions, answered from the source.
Six things homeowners in Loudoun and Fairfax ask us about curbside mailboxes. Every figure on these pages is quoted from the document it came from, with a link and the date we read it, and anything we could not source is named as missing rather than guessed at.
The guides
- USPS curbside mailbox rules, with the source
Height, setback, house numbers and the post, quoted from the USPS pages and the Postal Operations Manual, each with the date we read it.
- You got an HOA letter about your mailbox
What the letter is, what the Virginia Property Owners’ Association Act says about notice and a hearing, and the order to do things in.
- A snowplow hit your mailbox in Northern Virginia
Who plowed the street decides who you ask. How to find out, how to report it to VDOT, and what VDOT actually says it will do.
- Repaint or replace a faded mailbox
The three things to check before you decide, and the case where repainting is the wrong answer.
- Mailbox post materials: wood, metal, vinyl
What the federal roadside guidance says a post may be, why that rules out a brick pillar, and how the three materials fail.
- What to do about a rusty mailbox post
How to tell surface rust from a post that is going, and what surface preparation before paint actually does.