Evening Ron,
I don't recommend varying from my principle of splicing the top rail over a joint. I go by fences all the time where they spliced the top rail where ever the joint hit. And for one reason or another the weld failed, the material around the weld failed, or something just plain broke. It just isn't near as likely to happen when the joint if over a post.
Another thing to consider is the natural warpage of metal due to the weld heat. Unless you weld it just right and then come back with a torch to compensate you're going to have a whoop. Whoops are fun for kids on motorcycles to jump. They're also appropriate when hearing a great joke. But they look like heck in a fence line.
If you're gonna use sleeves get them to fit as tight as possible. And plan on blowing a hole in each piece of pipe and to a plug weld or two just to keep it all together. You might also consider using solid bar for your sleeve.
I don't recommend expansion joints. I know they're about as popular as sex. But unlike sex I've never needed one yet it seems. I don't use them and the lines stay straight while some of the pros who use them can't say that, about straight, wouldn't believe them about sex anyway.
I've heard all kinds of theories about driven posts versus concrete ones. About ninety nine point nine percent of those conversations have been about costs. I've heard that you only need to concrete in the corner, gate, and brace posts. The rest of them can be driven.
Based upon that theory it does seem to me one could assume that concreting in posts that you think are important says it all.
Another thought one might add to the driven post theories is that t posts work primarily because they have a flag to help keep them from falling over when the ground loses it's resistance or stability. So I guess a properly designed driven fence post would have flags both directions with about the same surface area as accepted concrete footings for that size of post and fence.
I had an old boy come into the shop here awhile back. He asked if I made gates and I confirmed I was so afflicted. He then explained how his fenceman had told him that a gate over twelve feet wide would always sag, guer roan teed. The good old boy wanted a second opinion. He really wanted a fourteen foot gate cause he was full aware of the fun one can have chasing two seven foot gates some days.
I asked him if he was sure his fenceman had told him that. He confirmed it again. I shook my head and asked him if he'd help me take down that twenty six foot single he'd just passed through. It'd been up five years and was surely bound to fail any minute.
He gave me his "sorry I asked a wise guy" look and left, not in a huff, I think it was a Ford.
If he'd hung around I'd pointed out that the gate had been hit at least three times by trucks. It's got as many dings as an auditorium full of blonds and still swings just as freely.
Ron can confirm all this about the gate. He'll also confirm there isn't an angle brace or cable or anything else but common sense keeping it from sagging.
What I didn't point out to Ron was how the barbwire on the gate is stapled on.
Yup, you heard right. Pipe verticals with the barbwire stapled on with wood staples, number two if'n I recall correctly.
In fact if you want to have a good fence and you're real partial to barbwire cause you don't partial to the neightbor.
Ppe posts with the barbwire stapled to it. It's ton more stout than wood or t posts and you will have the satisfaction of steaming up his field glasses as he stands there in the kitchen staring at you driving in wood staples into pipe posts.
It's not magic. A simple five sixteenths hole in the pipe. You take the wood staple. Slide it over the wire. Squeeze the points of the staple together. Put those points into the five sixteenths hole. Hit the staple with your hammer. You just did the deed like it usually isn't done.
The beauty of using wood staples to hold barbwire in pipe posts is what happens when you hit the staple with your hammer. The points cross each other right after they git into the dark. The only way to pull that puppy is with sidecutters or boltcutters. Because it isn't coming out, not even on a bet.
I learned that from my dad. He learned it from someone smarter than just about anyone else I'm sure. Dad had a way of expressing thing where you just took them for fact and wouldn't dream of questioning him about his source. If he'd been born later he'd been a perfect politician on that score.
