- Thread starter
- #51
baymule
Sustainability Master
Ok! I'm going to up date this thread with our fence. When we bought this place, there was nothing here but weeds, trash and a double wide. No. Fence. We had horses and had to have fence. Our neighbor Robert, was so happy that we were moving in, he wanted to help. I had to spend my time on the inside of the house. Our son in law Kilzed the walls after my daughter and I spent several days prepping everything. I then started painting, stripping the floors and I laid all new flooring, I'll post that after I post pictures on the fence. Any way, Robert had a motorcycle wreck, they found a tumor growing in his heart that would have killed him, so he had open heart surgery, a broken arm, broken ribs and about the time he recovered from that, he got cancer. He went through the treatments and was declared in remission. He and his wife moved here from Houston. It had been 3 years and he was just starting to feel human again. So he volunteered to help with the fence. He would come and pound a few T-posts, wear out, and go home. We bought a gas powered auger and he used it for the corner posts. It took several months, but I was redoing the inside of the house, and that took me several months too.
Robert was finally ready to run wire. My husband gave him hundred dollar bills, a day laborer's cell number (we had already found this guy and hired him several times) and told him to call, tell Felix to bring friends. Robert did that, and they got the wire strung around about 2 1/2 acres. My son's job ended and he showed up with a trailer to move my horses. This was on a Saturday, we closed on selling our old house on Wednesday and moved the following Saturday. We also had our 2nd grand daughter born the same day we closed on out old house, we hauled it to the hospital 3 hours away and got there 45 minutes before she was born. Back to moving the horses.....Robert was putting the finishing touches on the fence, when my son showed up with the horses. A worker was in the house finishing putting down vinyl in the bathrooms and utility room. Everything was coming together just in the nick of time. Our son helped us pack and drove the U-Haul to help us move. What timing for him to be out of a job! He is a crane operator and works refinery shut downs, large plant construction and such.
So we moved in. Fencing soon became a goal and we got started. Here ya' go.
There was nothing here but the house. Nothing. We had a house in town and acreage outside of town where we kept our horses, at our previous place. We had already made a lot of fencing mistakes. We used field fencing, which the horses could hang a hoof in and they pawed it to pieces in some places. Repairs were an ongoing project. We also stapled fence to trees where they were on the property line. Big boo-boo. Do you know what happens to the fence when the tree dies and falls down? Or when a storm blows the tree over? I do and I also know what it feels like to kick myself for making dumb mistakes. There was also a dry wash running through our previous land that turned into a raging, flooding river when there was a lot of rain. We had run the field fence across the dry wash and floods knocked it flat. Floods uprooted fence posts too. We sunk new fence posts deeper, concreted them in, and wired them to trees up to 10 feet away as anchors. After every hard rain, I was walking fence line to see if I needed to make repairs.
I was determined not to repeat the mistakes I had already made. I did my research. I waffled on the goat/sheep wire, but ultimately decided on the horse wire. My husband almost fainted on the cost, but got on board when I explained that it would keep all our animals in, even down to the chickens. It would also keep out other animals we didn't want on our place, so we bit the bullet and moved forward with the fence. I took lots of pictures, so I hope this helps some one else on putting up their fence. These are pictures of different segments of the fences we put up.
This is NOT welded wire, which IMO is total crap, as it comes apart under very little usage. This is WOVEN wire, look closely at the pictures and you can see the knot that holds the wire together at every single intersection of the wires. This is why woven wire costs so much more than welded wire. Most of equate "welded" with strength, I know I did, having worked in machine and welding shops when I was younger. But this does not apply to fence wire. Never, ever, waste your money or time on welded wire unless you want it purely for decoration, it will NOT last 'till the water gets hot, up against livestock or even dogs.
It is important to set sturdy corner posts, properly braced. For this corner post, we cut a red cedar tree and cut it to post lengths.
You can make a wire loop, stapled at the top and bottom of opposing posts, insert a screwdriver or a stick, and twist the wire to tighten up the posts. It also serves to keep the posts from spreading or moving apart. The wire twist can be seen in the photo below. You can even cris-cross the wires to form an X for added strength.
You will want to run a string from corner to corner and measure the string for spacing the T-posts. I marked the string with surveyors tape so I would know where to pound the T-posts.
For a short span, we stretched the wire from corner to corner, measured and marked the wire for driving the T-posts. This span was 70 feet.
This is my husband pushing the wire out while our neighbor, Robert pounds in the T-post.
In some places the ground was so hard, we had to get the T-post started, water it, let it soak, pound another inch or two, water it, water it some more, it felt like we were planting trees! A few of them had to soak overnight.
Robert was finally ready to run wire. My husband gave him hundred dollar bills, a day laborer's cell number (we had already found this guy and hired him several times) and told him to call, tell Felix to bring friends. Robert did that, and they got the wire strung around about 2 1/2 acres. My son's job ended and he showed up with a trailer to move my horses. This was on a Saturday, we closed on selling our old house on Wednesday and moved the following Saturday. We also had our 2nd grand daughter born the same day we closed on out old house, we hauled it to the hospital 3 hours away and got there 45 minutes before she was born. Back to moving the horses.....Robert was putting the finishing touches on the fence, when my son showed up with the horses. A worker was in the house finishing putting down vinyl in the bathrooms and utility room. Everything was coming together just in the nick of time. Our son helped us pack and drove the U-Haul to help us move. What timing for him to be out of a job! He is a crane operator and works refinery shut downs, large plant construction and such.
So we moved in. Fencing soon became a goal and we got started. Here ya' go.
There was nothing here but the house. Nothing. We had a house in town and acreage outside of town where we kept our horses, at our previous place. We had already made a lot of fencing mistakes. We used field fencing, which the horses could hang a hoof in and they pawed it to pieces in some places. Repairs were an ongoing project. We also stapled fence to trees where they were on the property line. Big boo-boo. Do you know what happens to the fence when the tree dies and falls down? Or when a storm blows the tree over? I do and I also know what it feels like to kick myself for making dumb mistakes. There was also a dry wash running through our previous land that turned into a raging, flooding river when there was a lot of rain. We had run the field fence across the dry wash and floods knocked it flat. Floods uprooted fence posts too. We sunk new fence posts deeper, concreted them in, and wired them to trees up to 10 feet away as anchors. After every hard rain, I was walking fence line to see if I needed to make repairs.
I was determined not to repeat the mistakes I had already made. I did my research. I waffled on the goat/sheep wire, but ultimately decided on the horse wire. My husband almost fainted on the cost, but got on board when I explained that it would keep all our animals in, even down to the chickens. It would also keep out other animals we didn't want on our place, so we bit the bullet and moved forward with the fence. I took lots of pictures, so I hope this helps some one else on putting up their fence. These are pictures of different segments of the fences we put up.
This is NOT welded wire, which IMO is total crap, as it comes apart under very little usage. This is WOVEN wire, look closely at the pictures and you can see the knot that holds the wire together at every single intersection of the wires. This is why woven wire costs so much more than welded wire. Most of equate "welded" with strength, I know I did, having worked in machine and welding shops when I was younger. But this does not apply to fence wire. Never, ever, waste your money or time on welded wire unless you want it purely for decoration, it will NOT last 'till the water gets hot, up against livestock or even dogs.
It is important to set sturdy corner posts, properly braced. For this corner post, we cut a red cedar tree and cut it to post lengths.
You can make a wire loop, stapled at the top and bottom of opposing posts, insert a screwdriver or a stick, and twist the wire to tighten up the posts. It also serves to keep the posts from spreading or moving apart. The wire twist can be seen in the photo below. You can even cris-cross the wires to form an X for added strength.
You will want to run a string from corner to corner and measure the string for spacing the T-posts. I marked the string with surveyors tape so I would know where to pound the T-posts.
For a short span, we stretched the wire from corner to corner, measured and marked the wire for driving the T-posts. This span was 70 feet.
This is my husband pushing the wire out while our neighbor, Robert pounds in the T-post.
In some places the ground was so hard, we had to get the T-post started, water it, let it soak, pound another inch or two, water it, water it some more, it felt like we were planting trees! A few of them had to soak overnight.
