Electric Fence?

[Nutcracker]

I am putting up an electric fence I have 14 gauge wire. My charger is 10 mile solar Zareba. I put the 7 ft T post about 1.5 ft into very hard ground, spaced at 20 ft apart. I am going to go with 4 or five wire. I am seeing conflicting things about having a loop or terminating the wire. The store I bought it from said it had to be a loop. So my question do I need to terminate each wire or do I need to make a loop? This fence is to keep deer out & is 60ft by 130 ft. Oh another question do i need wire tensioners or can i just pull the wire tight? If tensioners are needed which ones? Thanks

 

[jaxs]

I've never been told to loop the wire and 90% of fences were only 1 or 2 sides of enclosure. Maybe they are confusing
loop with alternating hot and ground wires which I do if stringing more than a single wire. Look the operators manual up to see what it says.

 

[ROUSTABOUT]

Deer can jump 12' high. Just run a string. Tie some pie pans and plastic grocery bags. Put a battery radio out there, wrap in a grocery bag. Batteries will last all summer. Yep, we still use a scare crow.

 

[jaxs]

12 feet !

 

[rScotty]

I am putting up an electric fence I have 14 gauge wire. My charger is 10 mile solar Zareba. I put the 7 ft T post about 1.5 ft into very hard ground, spaced at 20 ft apart. I am going to go with 4 or five wire. I am seeing conflicting things about having a loop or terminating the wire. The store I bought it from said it had to be a loop. So my question do I need to terminate each wire or do I need to make a loop? This fence is to keep deer out & is 60ft by 130 ft. Oh another question do i need wire tensioners or can i just pull the wire tight? If tensioners are needed which ones? Thanks

Each of the 5 wires has to be insulated from the T posts, but they don't need to be pulled tight. And they don't need to be in a loop of any kind. But they do all need to touch a wire that connects them all together at the first post so that they all get electrified by the charger.

Typically you would connect one wire from the terminal on the fence charger over to a common wire that touches all 5 of your wires on the first post. Now all 5 of your wires are "hot wires" and each one can go all the way to the end. At the end, the wire just quits. It does not need to loop, and there is no advantage to a loop. Each wire just wraps around its own final insulator on the last post and that is all that is necessary for those individual 5 hot wires.

To complete the installation, the other terminal of the fence charger goes to a copper rod driven into the ground a few feet. That is called the "ground wire". One copper rod is all that will be all that is required for a few hundred feet of fence. If you are going miles instead of just a few hundred feet around a yard, then sometimes you will designate one of the fence wires to be a "ground wire" instead of a "hot wire" and from that ground wire you will put more copper rods into the ground every few hundred feet or yards depending on the dryness of the soil.

When you are done, any animal standing on the ground and touching the wire will get a shock. Use your neon fence tester to check the fence.
The shock a good fence will give an animal is surprising more than painful - no lasting harm - but a lasting lesson. An occasional deer may figure it out and leap the fence, but most will get shocked when they are too young to leap the fence and after that they simply stay away from that fence forever.

 

[bcp]

The advantage of a loop, around a field, for example, is that it the wire is broken, it is still energized on both sides of the break.

Bruce

 

[lman]

Deer can jump 12' high. Just run a string. Tie some pie pans and plastic grocery bags. Put a battery radio out there, wrap in a grocery bag. Batteries will last all summer. Yep, we still use a scare crow.

That wouldn't hold my cattle.

 

[bullbreaker]

Nutcracker if possible and your still in a time frame to exchange it , return that Zareba . Parmak , Gallagher , and Cyclops are way better options for that if one can afford it . These are not sold in box stores . Parmak makes really good solar etc chargers , one can buy them off Amazon .

 

[Spike56]

I am putting up an electric fence I have 14 gauge wire. My charger is 10 mile solar Zareba. I put the 7 ft T post about 1.5 ft into very hard ground, spaced at 20 ft apart. I am going to go with 4 or five wire. I am seeing conflicting things about having a loop or terminating the wire. The store I bought it from said it had to be a loop. So my question do I need to terminate each wire or do I need to make a loop? This fence is to keep deer out & is 60ft by 130 ft. Oh another question do i need wire tensioners or can i just pull the wire tight? If tensioners are needed which ones? Thanks

Nutcracker, First let me say I claim no expertise here, others have given some good advice. Keeping deer out is beyond my experiences - I have only done electric fence for cattle at times. By my standards, this is a small fence run. IF and only IF, you are also trying to keep other animals out, AND you have very hard ground (as I do), you might consider having a ground between the hot wires. At least here, when the ground is baked dry, the conductivity between the ground in the ground and the hot wires becomes near zero.
Just a thought here. What you are putting up for deer should work UNLESS there is something attracting them. If so, like yummy garden greens.... may help but they easily jump my 5' barbed wire cattle fences all the time. Good Luck.

 

[DJ54]

Sounds like a similar set up that I have. Mine is terminated at 2 ends, where it meets the pasture fence. My Donkey keeps them out of the pasture. I have an entry way, with T-posts set approx. 42" apart, and use the spring loaded gate handles, connecting the fence. I made another entry way approx. 14' wide with the same set up to get my tractor through, to plow and disk. My top wire is at about 5' high, and for the most part kept Deer out, except, occasionally one pesky Doe. I read in a garden group, to late to try it last year, putting some peanut butter on some wires, since Deer apparently like it, they will lick it and get shocked. As mentioned above, it will startle them, but not harm them. I plan to try that here in the next couple of weeks before anything starts to grow.

Something that also worked great, I did several years back, was to plant a hedge fence of Sunflowers around the perimeter. I planted 8 rows of the tall striped type, and 4 rows of the short black oilers, within a 36" width. The theory is, Deer will not jump over something, they cannot see the other side of. Planting the shorter black oilers, fills in the lower midsection of the tall stripers, making a lush hedge fence. They may browse on a few when small, but there are so many, it made little difference. It worked great for me, until several years ago, when we got a lot of Spring rains, and drowned out part of them in the lower part of the garden, and allowed an entry for the Deer. I plan to do the same this year, and still have the electric fence. I also planted Marigolds along the part that's right at the road, approx. 4' from the electric fence. Deer don't like the scent, and will stay away from them. I plan to do another side this year, where "she" seem to come in.

Sunflower seeds aren't all that expensive if you buy the 2 lb. bags, to feed to the birds. That sized bag will plant a border around mine, enough for 2 years. After that, the germination rate gets poor. I just put the rest in the feeder for the Cardinals, so they don't go to waste.

Here's a pic from 2015, where I planted a hedge fence around the Sweet Corn. Worked great, until that old heifer got a taste for the Heirloom Mortgage Lifter tomatoes... She would eat those when ripe, yet, pull the Celebrity hybrids off, and drop them on the ground. Hoof prints in the dirt, and teeth marks in the tomatoes gave her away.

 

[Bill Guenthner]

Sounds like a similar set up that I have. Mine is terminated at 2 ends, where it meets the pasture fence. My Donkey keeps them out of the pasture. I have an entry way, with T-posts set approx. 42" apart, and use the spring loaded gate handles, connecting the fence. I made another entry way approx. 14' wide with the same set up to get my tractor through, to plow and disk. My top wire is at about 5' high, and for the most part kept Deer out, except, occasionally one pesky Doe. I read in a garden group, to late to try it last year, putting some peanut butter on some wires, since Deer apparently like it, they will lick it and get shocked. As mentioned above, it will startle them, but not harm them. I plan to try that here in the next couple of weeks before anything starts to grow.

Something that also worked great, I did several years back, was to plant a hedge fence of Sunflowers around the perimeter. I planted 8 rows of the tall striped type, and 4 rows of the short black oilers, within a 36" width. The theory is, Deer will not jump over something, they cannot see the other side of. Planting the shorter black oilers, fills in the lower midsection of the tall stripers, making a lush hedge fence. They may browse on a few when small, but there are so many, it made little difference. It worked great for me, until several years ago, when we got a lot of Spring rains, and drowned out part of them in the lower part of the garden, and allowed an entry for the Deer. I plan to do the same this year, and still have the electric fence. I also planted Marigolds along the part that's right at the road, approx. 4' from the electric fence. Deer don't like the scent, and will stay away from them. I plan to do another side this year, where "she" seem to come in.

Sunflower seeds aren't all that expensive if you buy the 2 lb. bags, to feed to the birds. That sized bag will plant a border around mine, enough for 2 years. After that, the germination rate gets poor. I just put the rest in the feeder for the Cardinals, so they don't go to waste.

Here's a pic from 2015, where I planted a hedge fence around the Sweet Corn. Worked great, until that old heifer got a taste for the Heirloom Mortgage Lifter tomatoes... She would eat those when ripe, yet, pull the Celebrity hybrids off, and drop them on the ground. Hoof prints in the dirt, and teeth marks in the tomatoes gave her away.

Good post! I plant black oil sunflower out of the 25 pound bags at TSC. The get really tall. The squirrels and birds plant a lot of them for me, as they scatter them all over and rain washes them into little knocks an crannies around the yard and edge of the woods.

 

[rScotty]

Those are incredible garden pictures. Thanks for posting them. We don't have the climate here to grow gardens like that. So keeping the deer out of the yard has nothing to do with the garden. We plant one, but it's not worth preserving.

We keep the deer - and larger animals - out of the yard with electric fencing because they all carry ticks, and because not having them in the right next to the house & barn helps keep the predators away.

 

[Bill Guenthner]

Each of the 5 wires has to be insulated from the T posts, but they don't need to be pulled tight. And they don't need to be in a loop of any kind. But they do all need to touch a wire that connects them all together at the first post so that they all get electrified by the charger.

Typically you would connect one wire from the terminal on the fence charger over to a common wire that touches all 5 of your wires on the first post. Now all 5 of your wires are "hot wires" and each one can go all the way to the end. At the end, the wire just quits. It does not need to loop, and there is no advantage to a loop. Each wire just wraps around its own final insulator on the last post and that is all that is necessary for those individual 5 hot wires.

To complete the installation, the other terminal of the fence charger goes to a copper rod driven into the ground a few feet. That is called the "ground wire". One copper rod is all that will be all that is required for a few hundred feet of fence. If you are going miles instead of just a few hundred feet around a yard, then sometimes you will designate one of the fence wires to be a "ground wire" instead of a "hot wire" and from that ground wire you will put more copper rods into the ground every few hundred feet or yards depending on the dryness of the soil.

When you are done, any animal standing on the ground and touching the wire will get a shock. Use your neon fence tester to check the fence.
The shock a good fence will give an animal is surprising more than painful - no lasting harm - but a lasting lesson. An occasional deer may figure it out and leap the fence, but most will get shocked when they are too young to leap the fence and after that they simply stay away from that fence forever.

You just taught me how to install electric fence in four paragraphs. Epic!

 

[JD5210]

I suggest you start by going to the Dare Products web-site they have some very helpful information such as fence designer. High tensile fences do get stuck by lightening. So, you may want to add a choke. Make sure you get a charger for high tensile fences.

My experience is the fence does nothing to stop deer. I have seen them jump a 6 foot fence, go under it and thru it. I loop the fence. If you going under ground to cross an opening or go from the charger to the fence, spend the money and get the correct wire.

Dare Products, Inc - 70 Years of Electric Fencing

Based in the U.S., Dare manufactures and distributes quality electric fencing products nationally and internationally to wholesalers, co-ops and retail buying groups.

www.dareproducts.com

 

[CobyRupert]

The advantage of a loop, around a field, for example, is that it the wire is broken, it is still energized on both sides of the break.

Bruce

This.
An advantage not only if fence breaks, but if the hot fence wire gets grounded somewhere along the fence by a stick, grass, or a faulty insulator, then the fence beyond the short is still being fed from the other direction and won’t be dead.
Also, when animal touches the fence, it gets a stronger shock because the current has 2 paths to travel to the animal. There’s less resistance and less voltage drop.

2 things to remember:
When nothing is touching an electric fence, the fence just gets energized (a voltage), but there’s (essentially) no current or power flowing from it.
The “shock” is only when current flows, from the wire, through the animal, through the earth, and back into the charger through the ground rod connected to the charger. Current path needs a loop back to the charger. This is why ground rods, or a separate ground wire back to the charger is important. Also why the moisture content of the soil is important. The more conductive paths, both on the hot and ground side from the charger to the thing getting shocked (that bridges hot and ground), the stronger the shocking current will be.

 

[Hay Dude]

You just taught me how to install electric fence in four paragraphs. Epic!

Bill, Heres how I set one of mine up.

The fence charger can be picked up and moved anywhere.

 

[Bill Guenthner]

Bill, Heres how I set one of mine up.

View attachment 744503

Thank! That’s exactly what I need. Low cost and can go away in the winter. What size battery is needed to drive that?

 

[Hay Dude]

Thank! That’s exactly what I need. Low cost and can go away in the winter. What size battery is needed to drive that?

Its a built in battery pack-charged by the solar panel. Got them from Amazon.

 

[beowulf]

Regarding how much the electric fence 'lesson' will deter - many years ago I read a news article about cattle that died because their water source went down. There was an electric fence between them and a river, but they would not cross it to drink and just stayed inside and died. It was so many years ago that I read this that I cannot recall any more details - but remember well thinking about how they were that afraid of the fence.

 

[LouNY]

Well I've dealt with a few electric fences and I will disagree with some of the posters on here.
I prefer loops and tensioners.
Also I would never make all the strands hot unless I was building through water.
Come summer time dry dirt has no conductivity, even here in the humid northeast in the summer
I have seen many times when the ground was dry enough that it was not conductive, so I connect every
other strand to ground, a good ground rod and the fencer ground.