I have a 2 strand polybraid fence, and I made the gates out of 14ft sections of leftover polybraid. It made sense to me instead of buying the springs and so far, it’s worked fine for me.
I was wondering if anyone else has done this too? I couldn’t find an instance online and that leads me to believe theres a reason for it.
Gate handles and electric fencing material work fine for gates. I do the same all the time, especially at the far reaches of the pasture.
Although if you will be traveling through the gate a lot, negotiating two strands of electric on a regular basis is annoying. You might want to put in a “real” metal gate, which gives you a few options on how to get the electricity across the gap. You can use a single strand and a gate handle and run it outside or inside of the gate (if you run the strand through PVC pipe, it makes it even easier to handle). You can get plastic tubing and bury the hot wire under the ground. Or you can attach poles and run it above.
I hate spring gates. They are handy, until they spook a horse, or even worse, get stuck on their tail/blanket/lead rope…
I ran my electric fence under the gate - I joined the tape to a strand of heavy gauge insulated wire, ran the wire down the gate post and then through a section of old garden hose that I buried a few inches down. At the other side of the gate the wire goes up to the level of the electric tape where it is connected. I hate electric gates. But, horsie has not yet figured it out. Of course I could just run a fake strand of tape on the fence to make it “look” hot…
We also ran the electric under the gate. My horses are fine, I was worried about shocking myself.
These 2 have no history of testing the fences they’ve been in, so typically when I’m inside the fence I kill it (mainly because my dumbass will forget period).
Good to know about the springs, I thought I saw something online about them not really being the solution.
We don’t take the horses out enough to really warrant the effort in putting in a steel gate. Maybe some day.
We have three Electrobraid like that and they are energized only at the handle end, the other end is insulated from the rest of the fence so once you unhook them they are dead, they all have wire underground keeping the connection, it was a matter of needing to be able to drop the fence and put it back up quickly if necessary, but they do have some drawbacks. You have to keep some tension on them to keep that visual barrier if horse number 2 crowds at all, and that means you may need about 4 hands, or ensure that you have them well trained regarding who goes out and when. For two horses that you know well who are well trained and not pushy it works fine.
DH made all the connectors himself out of the old porcelain insulators and electric fence wire. The nice plastic and nylon things Electrobraid sells didn’t hold up well Those insulators will last, and last.
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