Post Hole Digging Problems

[2manyrocks]

There is a post in the TBN Yanmar forum of an unfortunate owner who broke the rear cast housing on his tractor using a PHD that I think hit some obstruction. About all I can say is to be sure you have a snap bolt somewhere that will snap off before you break something on your tractor.

A friend of mine had so much rock that he wound up renting a rock drill for many, many weekends on end to drill holes to set T posts.

 

[Carykong]

over a hundred wooden posts mounted into 3' of rock and rocky soil? sounds like we could rethink the whole solution. How about drilling 1" hole into the rock surface,18" deep, with impact drill. set 3' rebar,3/4 inch in diameter into hole and anchor with motor. So you will have a 18" section of rebar above surface. 3/4 inch hole into your bottom wood post approx 18". Tap post over rebar. Done

This would be your method when hitting solid rock or near solid rock.

By the way,this is all theory. Just seems mounting over 100 wooden posts into rock is tilting at windmills. Good luck.

 

[kidr]

When i hung out in the catskills we used to say there was 3 rocks for every dirt.You could start a hole here ,and it would end up over there.Notice all the rock wall fencing? There's a clue. How about a nice A frame split rail fence? I think they're called Virginia fences. Really beautiful and no digging. I love the look.

 

[warhammer]

On my farm you have to seriously hunt to finde a rock of any sort.
I sunk 40 8-9" posts for corners and braces over the last several months and the average "easy" ones took 45 minutes to put in. There were a handful that were not easy, those took a couple of hours. There was one that was hardpan from 5 inches down that took 5+ hours.
If you are going thru rock and getting the posts set in an hour I'd say your doing pretty good.

Warhammer

Thanks for all the great advice. I've dropped a few more posts since this thread started. I've been busy with other things and can only work on the fence a few hours here and there right now. It is still taking me like an hour to dig and set a post on a bad hole (and most to this point seem to have been bad).

So I guess I just have to expect to spend about 60 hours setting the posts for this fence. (About 500' of fence with posts at 8'.) That's FAR more time than I had figured. Was I just being naive? Is this the kind of time you guys need to put in when working in bad rocky soil? (How long did your 120 holes take you Sniggle?) Or is this just my inexperience and/or bad luck?

 

[RedRocker]

I've got the same deal you do, layers of rock. Harvey is right, I rented a skid steer with a Beltec hydraulic drill and rock bit. It still jumped all over the place and was impossible to keep the holes lined up. This was my first try at fencing and came out OK, but nothing like what Harvey lays down. I feel your pain, most of the time it's a rock bar and hand post hole digger for small jobs.