Tightening post spacing for hign tension fence?

[clovergamecock]

Thanks all! Yes our horses are fence trained. I already have 2 pasture sections running 3 lines of hot wire. When I built those, 5 or so years ago, half of the fence is 3 rail split spaced at 11' apart with 2 lines inside that are hot. The rest of the fencing is tposts with 3 wires but I ran those 11' apart same as the split rail. After reading many posts on here I did not need to space tPost that close together. I have seen some who have spaced them 30' apart. From a cost standpoint I wanted to run the spacing as far apart as possible but have solid corners for tightening. I planned on running 4 strands on the new part since my tpost spacing will be farther apart and figured I would light up 3 of the 4 wires.

Thoughts??

Wade

 

[DT86]

Sounds like a plan, I'd leave the top three hot. Seems like horses are more likely to go over than under, right?

 

[6011Artist]

I had high tensil wire for 15 yrs and as long as you kept it hot, he could smell the wire to know if electricity was on it. At times the weeds might get high or something would short out, I'd unplug it until I had time to fix it. After a week or so he'd figure it out and start losing respect for the wire.

I kept all my wires hot, 4 strands. I never had a dog problem as far as in my horse pastures.

I also had a electric dog fence. Was basically a really large dog pasture. It had 7 strands on 3' posts. Those dogs respected that wire. My problem came with dogs that weren't mine that didn't know anything about electric fencing. I had one dog that would go through the wire to get to the food knowing my dogs would kick his butt when he got in there. He was hungry enough to fight the wire to get in but wouldn't fight it to get out. I had to let him out many times.

I googled electric fencing for dogs and found a site where sheep herders were trying to keep the wolves out of their sheep pen. I then made every other wire hot and drove a piece of chain link top rail pipe in the ground (actually washed it down with a water hose) for a ground rod. I thought my 8' rod was all I needed. Between having a better ground rod and every other wire hot so they would be touching a hot and ground if they attempted to come through the wire, I never had a dog problem again.

So while building your fence, IF you have a dog problem, you may want to run some strands close to the ground with dogs in mind as you build that fence.

My regular 8' ground rod was what the specs for my charger called for. I was in sandy/loamy ground. After reading, I learned a piece of 1 1/4 in galvanized pipe had more surface contact than the ground rod. I took a 21 ft piece of pipe and taped a water hose into one end and "washed" it down 13' until I hit soft shale rock. I then got on a ladder and drove it down another 2' until it started distorting the pipe. I cut it off with a portaband and connected the ground wire. Man, did I have a big difference in the ground. I could walk up to the wire and hang my test light and it would glow without sticking the probe in the dirt.

It's not about spacing but thought I'd throw that in there while you are building your fence.

 

[hosspuller]

Since you're using t-posts, you might use insulators on all strands. Keep all strands insulated for future charging.

 

[DT86]

Since you're using t-posts, you might use insulators on all strands. Keep all strands insulated for future charging.

I agree, even if you don't ever charge the other wires. I've seen the metal posts and the little wire clips rub the coating off of the fence wire and then it rusts, the insulators will prevent that.