Advice on DIY High Quality 4-Board Fence Installation

[mstraebel]

I’m getting a little worried that we may be taking on too big of a task. I estimate we’ll have 350 posts to set. We are strong, but not young (50ish) and I do have the summer off as I work in the school system. However, it sounds like just the tamping process could be a huge grind. Am I dreaming or did I read about some sort of gas powered tamping device? I’ll have to see if we can rent a post driver in this area, vs. an auger.

We have considered contracting out the post digging/setting portion. It adds a lot to the price, and I’m not sure we can afford it, but we may have to reconsider.

Tom–Nice picture of your fence and horse! I can get 4x4’ locust posts for $6.40 and 5x5’ for $10.00. The 4x4’s seem small but it looks like what you might have. Would the 4x4’s be okay for 4 board oak fencing?

What is flex rail? I haven’t considered that?

It sounds like no concrete except for maybe gate posts.

[sketcher]

It’s a huge job. You’ll do well to get in 15-20 posts a day. In our area,we are lucky to get in 15 posts a day using a post hole digger on the back of the tractor. We have rocks and even a small rock can stop the auger. Lots of time to stop drilling,reach down, liberate the rock, start digging again. Some holes have to be dug by hand. The pro’s area lot faster but also cost big bucks and if you are conscientious there is no reason why your fence won’t look as nice as that done by a pro,

Hopefully you are in a part of the country where you don’t have issues that make it tough to dig.

That being said, once you get past the learning curve, you’ll get into the groove. And you will save a boatload of money.

The hardest part is making sure the fenceline is straight. Use string and don’t deviate. Do 10-15 posts at a time and take a look before attaching boards so you can see the line looks straight - or at least not zig zaggy. If it is not quite right, go back and reset the offending posts. Use string. Be a fanatic.

Maybe you could do it over two summers?

[alabama]

Tamping is an absolute pain in the a$$! Those tampers are heavy. I’ve put in a few posts by myself and was absolutely worn out and I don’t think I’m too much of a wimp. To me, tamping is hard and boring work.

[shortbusgeek]

Assuming the person suggesting the flex rail is talking about a Centaur type product, I’d second that. It’s a plastic / polymer type material that comes with a 20 to 30 year warranty and you never have to replace a board due to rot / chewing / kicking, etc. It comes in rolls. We bought the 5" roll of Centaur which comes in 660’ lengths. You should have seen the look on our neighbors’ faces when they saw how quickly it went up once we had the posts in the ground. They quickly mentioned how often they had to replace boards and how it’s measure, cut, measure, cut, etc. We don’t have to do any of that.

As for the posts, we went with rounds. We have some curves along the road and other areas though where we really didn’t want to have to spend a lot of extra time figuring out the position / angle at which to set each post. The round you can screw in to on any side. Which leads me to the screws vs nails… go with screws. I also second the star / torx drive.

You may want to consider just buying an auger. We bought ours at Tractor Supply for $450 I think it was? We still have more fencing to do, but if you fence everything and don’t need it anymore, you can turn around and put it on Craigslist for probably just less than what you paid for it. I would imagine it’d be cheaper than renting one, as this is probably not a weekend project. We hit some extremely hard clay in some areas, rocks, etc and it took us weeks of augering / digging / filling the holes with water / augering some more… to put up just the first two paddocks. I can’t imagine what the rental fee would have been on renting one for that long would be.

Whatever you decide, good luck!

[baysngreys]

When we lived in CA we thought that, even with the cost of the tractor, we’d save money by putting in our own fencing. Didn’t figure on hitting solid granite!
8 hours and 6 “sort-of” post holes later - we called in the experts.
The “soil” was mostly DG and the rock (mountain?) we hit made it impossible to do it ourselves. So we had the posts put in (concrete at every post!) and spent a couple of weeks installing the rails and gates.

Here in SC, with wonderful sandy soil, I’ve been able to install several lines of fencing myself.

So a lot will depend on the type of soil you’re working with.

In CA we had to use concrete, in NE and the South, only at the hinge side of the gates.
Talk to a couple of fence guys in your area, ask what they normally do. You might want to get the posts set and then install the rails yourself. Depends on your time frame and pain thresh-hold!

[Jackie_amp_Starlette]

Just have to add this video I saved…how to set posts without cement…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkhz1RY0cY8