Fence

[Indygunworks]

I will be installing some fencing on our property once we move after the house is finished this spring. I plan on one full roll on each side just to start with. This will mostly be to keep my dog roughly contained, and neighbors dogs from cutting across my property. It will also allow me to plan privacy trees along our backyard area. Eventually I will add a board fence across the front w/ a gate (165 feet). I think I want to use the goat type fence around 52 inch's tall w/ a single strand of barbed wire at the top. I do plan on goats and chickens so starting out w/ this type of fencing will allow me to pen areas off the property line fence and contain anything that I want to contain.

What I am looking for would be a material list, or purchasing guide so I can look up prices for all the of the items I would need to buy for the two 330ish (standard roll size?) feet of fencing.

I have 12 16ft telephone poles on the property that I plan on using for the braces, but I will probably buy the cross brace due to weight and ease of handling. My telephone poles are at least 12" diameter.

Should I add an additional set of braces in the middle of the 300 foot run?

 

[Streetcar]

Many recent telephone poles are designed to leach their perservatives into adjacent soil. The poles rot quickly if moved. I was told this about both phone and electric poles

 

[Gary Fowler]

With a good corner post, you can tighten the wire enough that you don't need intermediate bracing. I put up the same type of fence using steel T post and stretched full roll runs without middle bracing. This is a two man minimum job so one can pull the wire ( I used the winch on my RTV) and the other can keep the wire free from hang ups.

It remained tight for over a year till we had some trees fall over on it. Large trees can get more stretch out of the wire than most pullers.

 

[Indygunworks]

Wont have to worry about trees for many many years, its all open pasture now.

Noted about the leaching. I am still using the telephone poles though. My dad has some he put in before I was born and they don't look any worse for wear.

 

[DJ54]

I still have a line fence with telephone pole butts, for corner's & brace posts that was put in in 1969, and still as solid as when they were put in, except for a little weathering on the top. Line posts, are actually pole butts split by hand, with wedge's & sledge. About 1/4 of those are just now rotting at the ground level. But those are out of poles that were fully pressure treated. They're really not that hard to split, if you start in what we called the weather cracks in the butt end. The cracks that are there from drying out. First, split it in half, then you can get either 2 or 3 post from each half, depending on the size of the pole.

Here, we set the corners & brace post 4' deep, and tamped in solid. Line posts 30", and tamped in well also.

We always set line posts every 10'. Some go further, but with horses & cattle, 10' seems to work well.

If you're getting goats, it would be advisable to put the fence to the inside of the posts, and a strand of electric fence at shoulder height. Come Spring when they start shedding, they like to rub on the fence. They will lean into it, then start walking.

I also like to set a 2 X 6 on the ground at each post to space the fence off the ground, so as to make it easy to trim under, with the trimmer. More than likely, with goats, all you'll be trimming is on the outside of the posts where they can't reach. I know the one's I had, sure made my trimming job a LOT easier..!!

 

[franklin2]

Should I add an additional set of braces in the middle of the 300 foot run?

Usually you can get away without an extra set of braces unless you have a fairly large hump or low spot in the fence run. When you hook the fence to your truck or tractor and start putting tension on it, You will want to pull on it evenly top to bottom to keep the fence tensioned evenly top to bottom. If you have a low place in your run, you will find the fence to be way up in the air after you put tension on it, and if you try to pull it down to the ground, the fence will want to "wrinkle". And if you do force it down to the ground, get it hooked to the post, and put more tension on it, it will tend to try and pull that post out of the ground.

Same if you have a hump in your run. You can fudge a slight hump, but if it's fairly high, when you tension the fence the fence will tend to be dug into the ground. You can try to pull it up to the post, but it doesn't work very well.

The best thing to do if you have a large belly or hump in the fence line is to put another set of braces right in the hump or the belly. You can then make a straight pull from the corner to the braces in the middle, cut the fence and make another pull from those braces to the other end. Sorry to say, but if you have more than one hump or belly, you should have a set of braces for each area, so you can always tension the fence in straight pulls with the ground, to avoid wrinkling the fence.

 

[Streetcar]

Indy and dj
My comments on utility poles are for recent poles that comply with the new era regulations. They are not the same as pole from twenty years ago.

 

[whistlepig]

Usually you can get away without an extra set of braces unless you have a fairly large hump or low spot in the fence run. When you hook the fence to your truck or tractor and start putting tension on it, You will want to pull on it evenly top to bottom to keep the fence tensioned evenly top to bottom. If you have a low place in your run, you will find the fence to be way up in the air after you put tension on it, and if you try to pull it down to the ground, the fence will want to "wrinkle". And if you do force it down to the ground, get it hooked to the post, and put more tension on it, it will tend to try and pull that post out of the ground.

Same if you have a hump in your run. You can fudge a slight hump, but if it's fairly high, when you tension the fence the fence will tend to be dug into the ground. You can try to pull it up to the post, but it doesn't work very well.

The best thing to do if you have a large belly or hump in the fence line is to put another set of braces right in the hump or the belly. You can then make a straight pull from the corner to the braces in the middle, cut the fence and make another pull from those braces to the other end. Sorry to say, but if you have more than one hump or belly, you should have a set of braces for each area, so you can always tension the fence in straight pulls with the ground, to avoid wrinkling the fence.

I do this also on a hump or belly. If the ground is flat I put a set of braces in at the end of each roll of fence. And also where I plan to add gates in the future.