Fencing... A New Feather In My Hat!

As a boy I remember spending time with Dad, fencing on the sheep & cattle farm that we lived on in the mid 80's in Taranaki. I remember at the time I found it was rather boring and I used to just hang out in the Holden Rodeo ute while Dad was working.  But from that experience I do remember some small details about how Dad built the farm fence. I remember watching Dad using a post hole borer to dig the holes, putting the fence post in and ramming in the dirt to make the post stand tall and strong. I remember helping Dad with that, and dad said all the dirt has to go back into the hole so ram it in good and hard, then running the wires down the fence line.

It's these little things that I remember from my childhood on the farm, and then with the help of Google, I guess this is what gives me the confidence and drives the DIY in me. Dad wasn't educated, and I guess he learned what he knew from his Dad, and working on farms at a young age himself... and he always had that good ole "can do attitude". So if Dad could do it, then I surely can do it, especially with all the information that can be found online today.

But in saying that I wish Dad was still with us today to help and give me some guidance and advice on how to build a fence and other things. 

The previous weekend we had all the timber delivered for the building the fence around the Septic runoff area.  It was quiet a lot of timber, and I was expecting a truck with a crane type setup to deliver the timber, but no, it came in two loads on the back of a trailer, so we had to unload it all by hand. We lost half a day with that.

So this weekend, we've got stuck in and started building our fence. 

So my fence design is based on a post and 2 rail, and then an outrigger type hot wire near the top, and a standard wire along the bottom.   

The hot wire is more to stop the cattle & sheep rubbing on the fence, so they don't damage it.

The posts are 1500mm tall and 100x100mm. We dug the hole about 55cm deep so 1/3rd of the post was in the ground. The posts are set at about 2 meters apart and we used a post hole auger/borer to dig the holes and a post rammer to ram in the dirt.

The two horizontal rails are timber that is 150mm x 50mm and are spaced 30cm apart, and then the hot wire will run between the two of them.  I'm going to invest in solar powered battery pack for the electric fence... I just need to do a little more research on that though.

Then half way from the ground to the bottom of the first rail, we will just run a normal fence wire along the bottom of the fence and use the wire strainers to tighten that wire.

 

Slow progress....

 

By the end of the day, the fence was completed. We just need to run the two wires along the fence, but that should be a quick job for next weekend, then we can start planting and mulching the area inside the fence, the final bit for council compliance.