Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance

Proper prior planning prevents poor performance.

What’s up guys this is Daniel from arms family homestead and in today’s blog I’m going to give you six common mistakes that people make when building a fence.

So there are a lot of mistakes that people make when they’re building a fence. And I just want to go over a few things that will help you in the future if you’re planning on building a fence on your property. 

TIP #1:

So for tip number one we might as well start with a ground up. That is the foundation of your fence is just like building a house. You’ve got to have a good foundation, and that on a fence is, corner post or stretch poster gate post, whatever you want to call them.

Basically, the post that at the end of your fence is going to be tied on to the biggest mistake people make is they either undersize, the post, or they don’t go deep enough when they dig their holes.

Now there are a couple different schools of thought on certain corner posts. For this example, these posts were dug underground with an auger and set in concrete; we dig them at a minimum of 36 inches. 

Now there’s a second school of thought that says you can drop those posts in the ground you have to go really deep, like say four or five feet. 

A lot of people will go too small on their corner posts, and I’ll show you some things that happen here. There’s some common mistakes that have been made. Sometimes you do go with the rat sized post, you just don’t go wide enough. So as you can see that fence doesn’t have a very wide h brace. You can see over the years that corner post has pulled the tension on the fences pulled in that direction.

Two things, in my opinion, there’s just an H brace here there probably should have been another kicker come down at a horizontal angle to the ground, this h is only about four feet wide. Probably should have been seven or eight feet to the neck of the second post, and then another seven or eight feet, you put another post in the ground, and you do your diagonal. And I think that would have held. 

Sometimes for whatever reason people decided to just use one post. Now I’ve seen guys build a fence and use like a great big wooden telephone pole. I mean, big post now that might hold, but something like this example I’m going to show you over here.

So this is a perfect example of what happens when you try to build a fence and you just use one post for a stretch post or a corner. Over time that’s going to stretch without that age brace and that diagonal, or even just the diagonal straight to the ground if it’s a short run. 

That single post more than likely isn’t going to hold. Now if this was a eight or 10 inch pot, or an eight or 10 inch wooden post, yeah, you might be able to get away with a single stretch post, but if you’re just going to use pot or small wooden posts, you definitely need that h that h brace in there and diagonal post something it takes more than one. 

TIP #2

Tip number two has to do with choosing the right kind of wire for your fence, you need to know ahead of time what you may be putting inside this fence. Whatever you are using this fence for you need to know ahead of time.

TIP #3

The third common mistake I see is not getting your fence line straight. There are a lot of people that will build a fence. Instead of setting in a corner post anywhere or setting a stretch post where the fence may need to make a curve I know not every fence line is gonna be perfectly straight.

In physics, I learned that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. So if I build a fence, and it’s and it’s got to have a curve in it or we’re going to go down and make a turn. If I don’t set a steel post or a wooden post something solid, with a kicker off of it that’s gonna brace that post. I tie my wire to the corner here, and a time or the corner here but I try to make a curve to get to it. 

Well, the straight line is going to go between the shortest distance between the two posts that are sitting concrete are my two stretch posts. So what you’ll see a lot of times and I’m not talking about being able to put a big bow in their fence. That’s obviously gonna fail, but sometimes you’ll see they get their fence a little bit crooked, and then the whole fence will lean. Well usually what’s causing the fence to lean, is it’s not straight. it’s not a straight line between the two points they drove all their posts. They didn’t pull it a perfectly straight line before they did. 

So make sure you get a nice straight line, it just looks pretty too when you get a good straight fence but make sure you get a nice straight line if you want your fence to stay standing perfectly straight over the years.

TIP #4

Tip number four, on the list may be a little bit controversial and I think a lot of people may disagree on this. One common mistake that I see people make is buying cheap material, when they build a fence, there’s a good chance you’re going to be on this property, a long time. 

Don’t cheap out on the materials, go out and buy good quality fencing materials, you have to look at that fence, as an investment in your property, a cheap fence is going to look cheap, and it’s not going to hold up over time you go out and you spend, save up, spend money, buy the best materials that you can afford. And that fence is going to last you a lot longer. It’s going to look a lot better.

TIP #5

We kind of hit on tip number five in the last point, and that was wire tightness, getting your wire super tight. It’s very important to take the stretch. Take the slack out of that barbed wire or horse or whatever kind of wire it is if it’s a single strand, two strand wire that’s woven like barbed wire is, if you just pull it tight once. Over time, it’s going to sag, it’ll sag I promise you, you have to go out in the middle of your fence line and walk it back while you still have it on your come along or whatever you’re using the structure fence, go pull that wire just walk backwards with it away from the fence line.

When you let it go and walk back up, you’ll see that it was up here, it’s now sagging you took a lot of the stretch out of it. 

TIP #6

Tip number six has to do with planning, you wouldn’t build a house without a plan. You wouldn’t build a road without a plan. If you’re going to be building fences on your property, in my opinion, it’s very important to have a plan. So you’re gonna want to know first off, you’re gonna know where all your underground utilities are. 

Are there water lines, electric lines. You need to call and schedule someone to come out and mark all of your utility lines because that’s one of those things that could cost you your life if you hit an electric line. 

Second is planning on simple things like gates plan out ahead of time, if you’re building a pan, there’s going to be two or three sides and connect your house, whatever it is, four sides. Put more gates in there then you’ll think you need. Sometimes people build a fence and they go, Hey, man, I wish I had a gate there well after the fence is built. It’s too late. 

So, think about it ahead of time, draw yourself, a little diagram, draw your property out on a piece of paper, put where you think you might need gates, and then come back to it. A week later and go. Is that really what I needed, or am I going to need more gates. 

Plan ahead of time, plan ahead of time, plan ahead of time. 

So that’s my, you know, pet peeve on thinking about a lot of fencing projects is people don’t plan it out, they just go buy some material and throw up a fence and then a year later, they’re like, why did I put up this kind of fence?

Remember that proper prior planning prevents poor performance

 

We hope this blog helps you with your next fencing project!

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