horse fence going up

mboulais · Jun 28, 2007

Resorted to putting the borrowed backhoe back on the tractor. 1.5 hrs to install, 20 minutes to dig one hole

. Only abot 30 to go.

Luremaker · Jul 2, 2007

mboulais said:
Resorted to putting the borrowed backhoe back on the tractor. 1.5 hrs to install, 20 minutes to dig one hole . Only abot 30 to go.

You should give a post driver a try. No drilling/digging and no need to remove most stones. Best of all no need for concrete.

mboulais · Jul 2, 2007

Luremaker said:
You should give a post driver a try. No drilling/digging and no need to remove most stones. Best of all no need for concrete.

I've seen post drivers for steel posts, I haven't seen any for 4 x 4 posts. I suspect that I would need a much heavier tractor to be able to push a 4x4 through the hard clay and many rocks that I loosely call soil.

I'm down to about 6 posts to go. I took a progress pic tonite, but didn't download it off the camera. I'm not doing any more rails until all the posts are in.

Only corners and around the gate got concrete. The rest are just being back-filled the tamped with the backhoe.

Luremaker · Jul 2, 2007

mboulais said:
I've seen post drivers for steel posts, I haven't seen any for 4 x 4 posts. I suspect that I would need a much heavier tractor to be able to push a 4x4 through the hard clay and many rocks that I loosely call soil.

I purchased a used shaver post driver in the spring and the ground was getting pretty dry around here but I still managed to drive 6" posts almost 4' into the ground. I have very rocky hard soil and there is no way I will ever be able to use an auger so I went looking for a used post driver. I am using the driver on my L3130 without any problems.

We have not had much rain for a few weeks now and the ground is too hard to drive posts into. I wait till the fall rains come to finish my fencing jobs.

mboulais · Jul 3, 2007

Luremaker said:
I purchased a used shaver post driver in the spring and the ground was getting pretty dry around here but I still managed to drive 6" posts almost 4' into the ground. I have very rocky hard soil and there is no way I will ever be able to use an auger so I went looking for a used post driver. I am using the driver on my L3130 without any problems.

We have not had much rain for a few weeks now and the ground is too hard to drive posts into. I wait till the fall rains come to finish my fencing jobs.

Wow! got any pictures?

drssg · Jul 3, 2007

Luremaker said:
I purchased a used shaver post driver.

I don't want to hijack this thread, but I posted a question about storing a post driver, but I didn't get any responses. If you have any input on this topic, I would appreciate it.

Rick

Luremaker · Jul 3, 2007

mboulais said:
Wow! got any pictures?

Here is the photo of my post driver. This photo was taken just after I purchased it. Before I could use it I actually had to buy springs as the previous owner broke the springs and never replaced them. Sorry I do not have any action photos I forgot to take the pictures. Later this summer or early fall as soon as we start getting lots of rain to soften the ground I'll be sure to take a few action pictures.

drrsg,
I almost killed myself trying to install the driver alone on my 3pt. Now it was lying on the ground as in the photo. I was so new to this I did not even have a road block on it and as you could imagine the whole driver portion would slide up and down depending on it's position. I emailed Shaver and they kindly sent me the owner's manual. I decided the best way to store it is lying down out of the way. To install it, I lifted the driver up with my loader and leaned it against a solid post and straped it there before unhooking the chain from my loader. Then backed up my tractor to the driver and hooked it up. Now I have only actually installed the driver once but I had no problems. Using the driver was a piece of cake.

weedsportpete · Jul 4, 2007

There is a neat video of the Shaver drivers on the Shaver site.

Streaming Videos of Products

dtd24 · Jul 6, 2007

wow, thanks for that video........I never saw a post driver in action, beside a huge pile driver. That thing looks like a beast. Kinda scary looking.

MikePA · Jul 6, 2007

mboulais said:
I've seen post drivers for steel posts, I haven't seen any for 4 x 4 posts. I suspect that I would need a much heavier tractor to be able to push a 4x4 through the hard clay and many rocks that I loosely call soil.

With the Worksaver post driver I have, the weight of the tractor is kind of irrelevant. The gpm of the hydraulic system is more important, but even then, the gpm determines how fast the ram rises. Dropping the ram is accomplished by dumping all the hydraulic fluid back into the sump which happens when you press down on the joystick.

I (just me, no helper

) drove 187 4" x 4" x 8' PT posts and 40 T posts with my NH TC25D. However, my post driver has legs the driver sits on both for storage as well as when driving, i..e, the legs support the driver not the lower arms of the 3ph which appears how the Shaver driver works. If so, it puts a lot more stress on the tractor. The Worksaver doesn't shake anywhere near as much as the one in the Shaver video.

BTW, I set about 6 posts using a post hole digger. No thanks. A driver turns a 2 step process into a one step process. I averaged about 15 - 20 minutes per post, which included tractor set up time. I also marked the ground where every post was going to go and laid a post at each mark. So all I had to do was drive to the mark, set up, drive the post and move to the next mark.