What are you paying to have fence posts driven? Also auger questions...

[Halfmagic]

Glad I ran across this today as we are in the process of not only redoing some of our extremely weathered fences but putting in a couple new lines, one primarily to section off a new arena from existing pasture.

Being completley new to fences and owning our own farm (I am a boarding facility child), we had no idea where to start; luckily my husband is a decent handyman! We live in Chesapeake, Virginia (part of Virginia Beach) and during the summer, it has been pretty wet and the ground is really soft. I wouldn’t say we have a lot of sand like a lot of people would assume. My husband rented one of those gas powered augers for the weekend ($85 per day from Home Depot, he is a pretty strong guy) and he and a farm help were only able to dig a total of 10 post holes! This includes putting in the post and cementing it! We recently went out and bought a new Kobota tractor (not huge but does have a 3 point hitch and can attach a front loader bucket) and we also have a 85’ Ford Tractor 1550 (I may be off there). We are thinking about getting the 3 point hitch, tractor auger to attach to the new Kobota as we have heard this is a lot easier! My poor unfinished fences have been sitting around for over a month now because my husband dreads doing them!

We did have multiple companies come out to do estimates and they were just WAY too expensive! The first one wanted $5,700 for 312 ft of fence and the best estimate still wanted almost $3,000. We just couldn’t do it at the time as the fence was not a life or death situation and we needed to use our money to remodel the barn more.

When would be the best time of year to do these post holes, in regards to where we live (we have only been in VA for a year now)?

Is it a good idea to cement them into the ground? I have been reading a lot about jamming them in. The prior owners did that here and it did NOT work well! All the ones that were jammed are loose and falling out ; they are the ones we have to replace.

Would you recommend us purchasing a 3 point auger hitch for the Kobota to finish the rest or keep renting the gas auger? Point blank… what way is the easiest and in the long run, cheapest?

Thanks!

[goodhors]

I have never seen any pounded posts that were not round. Square would not fit in the pounder I presume. I would think square is not used because they cost more to shape. Not what you want if putting up QUANTITIES of fence.

Our posts are creosote treated, we used NO Cement in setting them in clayish soil. We get a lot of moisture at times, even FLOODS, they are still solid in the ground and in good shape after 30+ years. The ones that got replaced, were those that had gotten broken off with machinery. LEARNER DRIVER on tractor!!

Soil may make a big difference, but around here the cemented, wood posts rot before the non-cemented, wood posts. So you would lose some years on fence life doing cement on your posts. Friends over in Metamora area have sandy gravel, also used the pounded posts, no cement. Real happy with those posts on a lot of miles of fences.

[rrb868s]

Post Drilling

[QUOTE=horseshrink;6525321]
I’m in the Texas Hill Country and my ground, “ain’t right” for sure. There is NOTHING but rock.

I have a man that drills the holes for me with some kind of “special” auger (diamond-tip?).

It takes approximately 30 minutes (sometimes more) for each hole and he can only go down about 16-18 inches. I have to concrete every pole since they are not that deep. He charges $65.00 per hour and I’ve never had him do more than 2 in an hour.

In FL, you could use a hand-held post-hole digger and dig 20 holes per day. :lol:[/QUOTE]

I’m new to the board and was wanting to know a little more about the drilling process. What size diameter holes do you need drilled for this application?

[Showbizz]

I think we paid about $8/post about three years ago. Totally worth it.

[TrotTrotPumpkn]

I can tell you, as the OP, I did more with this since then. Pounding is $10 a post here. $45 for corner posts, so $90 for an H brace.

We ended up doing half a bag of cement mixed with the dirt in the bottom of many of our augered holes. We rented several types of augers…the take away is just rent a skid steer (or use your tractor). If it is $200 (including augers and gas to get it) to rent a skid for 8 hours and I have it for the weekend then I know I better do way more than 20 holes, or I would have been better off hiring it done.

Regarding drill size, you need the hole to be large enough you can tamp around your post. Buy a tamper, btw. And a post hole digger.

This spring I’m doing the rest of our south line and tearing out the east line. That will be day one. Day two we will set the corner posts. Whatever I don’t get done, I’m going to hire driven…it’s worth it to me to do the bracing to save some money though.

Even though we are really good now at doing this, I assume the driven will just look a hair better, so it’s nice those will be along the driveway.

[Valentina_32926]

Fla- soil is mostly sand and we’ve never cemented in posts.

All corner and opening (gate) posts have cross braces (wires in shape of “X” and post at same height as top of 4 ft fence).

Dig deep hole (we use augur and SO rented one before we bought one), put in post.

Ensure post is correct height (8 ft post is at least 3 ft in ground), and level (left to right as well as up and down.
Add in some dirt/sand, add water then tamp down as hard as you can with stick (old axe handle works fine). Repeat this until hole is filled. if you don’t overfill with dirt, and do a good job tamoing, post will not move once done.

We normally wait a day or so (best if it rains) before tacking the wire fence to the posts.

Our posts have been up for 20 years.

[Bluey]

We have an hydraulic post hole auger that we hook to the side of the bucket on the tractor.
It will dig 3’ in about 2-3 minutes in hard ground.

We use the 8" auger for the line posts and a 10" for the corner and gate posts.

We put 1 1/2 to 2 sacks of concrete mix in the smaller holes and around 3 in the corners.

For years, we used to have one of those PTO augers and they were useless other than in sandy soil.
The hydraulic one will dig right down where the other could not even think of getting into the ground.

We have never tried to pound in other than steel t-posts.
I don’t know how pounding posts would work in our hard clay.

[Guilherme]

Tom is right on soil. He’s a flat-lander in a river valley. I don’t know how much rock he has in his soil. In the mountains the story is about rock. The valley floors can be soft, but significant rock is found about every where in this area. I watched two stout boys get flung from a two-handed auger like children off a spinning playground toy when the augur bit got stuck between two underground rocks. Newton will not be denied, and when the bit stopped the drive motor started to spin. Fast. Hard.

Around here you can rent a small tractor with an auger. The price is in the $200/day range (plus delivery). That’s not cheap but if you’ve got to run a lot of holes then it’s relatively economical.

G.

[Jumper_girl221]

[QUOTE=Halfmagic;6528449]
Glad I ran across this today as we are in the process of not only redoing some of our extremely weathered fences but putting in a couple new lines, one primarily to section off a new arena from existing pasture.

Being completley new to fences and owning our own farm (I am a boarding facility child), we had no idea where to start; luckily my husband is a decent handyman! We live in Chesapeake, Virginia (part of Virginia Beach) and during the summer, it has been pretty wet and the ground is really soft. I wouldn’t say we have a lot of sand like a lot of people would assume. My husband rented one of those gas powered augers for the weekend ($85 per day from Home Depot, he is a pretty strong guy) and he and a farm help were only able to dig a total of 10 post holes! This includes putting in the post and cementing it! We recently went out and bought a new Kobota tractor (not huge but does have a 3 point hitch and can attach a front loader bucket) and we also have a 85’ Ford Tractor 1550 (I may be off there). We are thinking about getting the 3 point hitch, tractor auger to attach to the new Kobota as we have heard this is a lot easier! My poor unfinished fences have been sitting around for over a month now because my husband dreads doing them!

We did have multiple companies come out to do estimates and they were just WAY too expensive! The first one wanted $5,700 for 312 ft of fence and the best estimate still wanted almost $3,000. We just couldn’t do it at the time as the fence was not a life or death situation and we needed to use our money to remodel the barn more.

When would be the best time of year to do these post holes, in regards to where we live (we have only been in VA for a year now)?

Is it a good idea to cement them into the ground? I have been reading a lot about jamming them in. The prior owners did that here and it did NOT work well! All the ones that were jammed are loose and falling out ; they are the ones we have to replace.

Would you recommend us purchasing a 3 point auger hitch for the Kobota to finish the rest or keep renting the gas auger? Point blank… what way is the easiest and in the long run, cheapest?

Thanks![/QUOTE]

Jodi, We are in the process of installing fencing right now as well with the new farm in Currituck NC (so probably similar soil…it has quite a bit of clay).

doing the tractor and an auger its been fairly painless. I ran two strings, one at the top and one at the bottom. We dig the hole as deep as the auger will go, get it as straight as possible with the string, then my husband pushes the posts another 2 feet or so with the excavator (issue is keeping it straight there!).