ALL the ways to set a fence post

Dig big hole with shovel in a wet winter, put pole in, backfill with clay that I've dug up from the ground, stomp down hard.
How naive am I being?

Emery Brown wrote:Dig big hole with shovel in a wet winter, put pole in, backfill with clay that I've dug up from the ground, stomp down hard.
How naive am I being?

Not at all naive. So much depends on the ecosystem and what the fence needs to keep in or out!
In my "all wet, all winter" environment, I would put a bunch of small rocks (which grow better than most of my plants...) in the bottom to help keep the wood post from sitting with wet feet, but other than that, what you describe is exactly what one of our neighbours did recently.

Gabion?

A cylinder of heavy gauge steel mesh, or grid, set on end and filled with rocks.

That IS the post.  

Rocks have to be bigger than the holes in the framework.  They need to settle in against each other.  They need a broad enough diameter to be stable.  

I don’t have any photos, but I found a few to give the general idea.

Gabions have a lot of potential uses beyond posts.  They are limited mostly be availability of rocks, and building the cage that holds the rocks.

Theka, I really like the look of those gabions! So simple yet elegant. The large square one would take a lot of rocks unless maybe fill the middle with other sort of wood scraps or a box liner made of wood or metal and cover it so not visible. Unless it had to hold up weight or keep something else upright, seems they are nice just for "looks".
As for real fence posts - we've made 2 ft holes with post hole digger to get down to clay soil and then added small crushed gravel at bottom 3 inches then place post and fill around it with more gravel tamped down firmly.  The posts are cedar and the bottom 2 1/2 ft painted with wood preservative. I know some may not like using "chemicals" but in the past we used creosote and this new stuff is supposed to be not as toxic, but it is copper based which is toxic in high concentration. But unless you're going to plant something in the vicinity I don't think either method is "harmful" and the idea is to provide longer life for wooden fencing which is a more "natural" material than steel or pipe.  If I were to do "junk pole fence" I'd also make the end posts secure with rocks/gravel.  If I had locust to use for fencing - since that stuff will not decay forever - no chemical treatment would be needed.

Hi Denise, I really like the idea of digging post hole, putting layer of gravel, then filling around the post with gravel!

As for the gabions, I would be careful about substituting anything for rock.  Unless it’s scrap concrete/urbanite.  I think the functionality of the gabion is in the mass of the rock, and the stability of the rock in how it settled in.  The gabion can move some, and it lets wayrun through it, though it slows the water down, and directs the flow.

The way old timers taught me to set fence posts here in N. FL...

Conditions:

Sand

Intense heat and some freezing in winter.

drought spring and fall

Monsoons in the summer most years

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dig a hole with a post hole digger.

Insert post and begin refilling/leveling as you go. About 3 -4 inches backfill at a time before....

Adding LOTS of water in the hole and then tamp the backfill within an inch of its life.

On to the next 3 - 4 inches of backfill and repeat.

Labor intensive but the post is rock solid from the get-go.

I only do this for corner and support posts now since those green/white tip metal T posts showed up, which get used for everything in between the main supports and are SO much easier...aside from a bit of fatigue from playing human pile driver to set them.

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And a weird thing...

If you set a wooden post in concrete here it will rot out in record time.

Just the sand you dug out is what you want for backfill

Where my horses live is sand, sand, sand and all winter is wet, wet, wet. So when I crossfenced the pasture, I sank treated 4x4's in concrete that sloped away from the post slightly to help with run-off. The very bottom of the post sat in the sand so any water that did run down it wouldn't be trapped by concrete.  This made a strong end post that I could pull fence tight against. Everything in between was t-posts.

Where my goats live is rock and gravel will minimal topsoil so we just sank the 4x4's and braced them. It works but not as well because when  tree fell on the fence, it yanked the corners UP, vertically.

Where we are thinking of moving to is high sagebrushy desert with lots of rocks, so I'm thinking the gabions will be perfect, as well as attractive, as well as good storage for all those rocks instead of all over the fields.

(1)  We live on a small rock farm, so have a couple of the rock-in-fencing thingamajigs. One for a bird bath base that got taken out by a pine tree the wind took out, another sits on a little hill in the driveway and does nothing, aside from support a six dollar solar light.  

Thinking of adding three (two outside and one in the middle) to the lower drive so I can block access that allows people to drive over our drain field.

Love these for the value of putting rocks that, otherwise, are a nuisance to use, and the fact no digging is required.

(2) I built a good size dog run. I'm in my seventies and not as healthy as I was when I was in my fifties.  Digging fence holes is tough, but I did manage to get down a couple feet in 12 holes dug for fencing using a post hole digger and a 5' wrecking bar.  

One thing that helped the digging was, being able to wet the dirt. It minimized caving.

When done digging the holes, I was ready to be done. However, I knew the metal poles needed more than just dirt packed around them.

I wet each hole down (shower mode on a nozzle, so it wouldn't blow sand and dirt into the hard won holes).  Next, I dumped a bag of dry cement in each hole. Then I added water and used some conduit to mix the water into the cement.  A two way post level insured the pipes were plumb.  

A day of drying and all the poles feel rock solid, even at the gate and the corners.

(3) Part of the dog run fence sits atop a concrete wall. That got a cedar treatment.

To do that, I pulled out one of my hammer drills and drilled holes big enough to hold  10 each 4x4 stirrup posts.  This left a small gap at the bottom and kept the wood off a horizontal surface, avoiding the problem of wicking rain water and snow into the wood, which would have caused the common problem of expanding and contracting the wood, hastening deterioration (cracking, splitting and rot).

I used so called concrete caulk around the stirrup posts. Should have gone with concrete or epoxy (oh well).

All the horizontal 2x's have about a 5 degree angle on top, so water will run off, rather than sit on the 2x's.

We get some pretty healthy winds here, so I installed outriggers off a couple 4x's, with ties back to the adjacent 4x's. That went a LONG ways to stabilizing the fence against the wind.

Because I can, I cut scrap granite from a local granite fabricator to about 5" squares, then polished the edges to use them for the tops of the 12 4x4's.   That guarantees water will never be a problem for the 4x tops, and we get a bit classier than usual fence.


(4)  On a whole different fence matter, there is our deck.  It wraps around three sides of the house. The main access is about 4' off the ground. The rest is a story up, because of the lay of the lot.  Accordingly, a fence around the deck was and is a must.

One of the problems with the deck (built before I came on to the scene) is, the second story sections are 40' runs, give or take some running. That means you wouldn't want to have a bar room brawl on the deck and be thrown against the railing-fence.  You would NOT find yourself a story up, where the brawl started.  I didn't even like the rail-fence for casual leaning. Though bolted, sections could move as much as 3", which means, in time, that movement would grow, as the railing was beaten up.

To solve that problem, I went to the outrigger approach again.  I used conduit a friend donated off a tearout they were doing at his work place.  I hammered the ends flat and bent them so the conduit attached to the rail-fence and decking at about a 70 degree angle.  That made a HUGE difference. The railing-fence feels solid, even out in the middle.

Another thing that drove me nuts about the railing-fence was that issue of horizontal surfaces AND that they fastened the top 2x6's (arm rest territory) by drilling through the tops. In other words, they made a few hundred wells in which water would sit, even with the best caulk job, and that's where the rot starts. And there were some pretty well rotted areas.


To solve the problem, I decided to use composite decking for the cap (arm rest-cooking area (composite gets hot)).  The 2" thick stuff for that purpose is off the charts expensive. So I chose far cheaper standard decking. The stuff without grooves.

To attach the composite to the fence-rail top, I took a lesson from table building.  If you look at a lot of tables, you'll notice a groove on the inside, just under the top, in the on edge apron supporting the top.  Clips fit into the groove and screw to the bottom of the table top.

I was able to buy the clips by the gross (about $20.00 a bag) and used about 3 bags (around 400 clips for my deck).  

To make the grooves the clips would fit into, I used my biscuit machine. It worked beautifully. Even on the stair railings.

When all the composite was installed (#8   5/8" square drive screws), I caulked the composite to the support 2x's. That both added strength to the joint and improved the appearance.

Again, because I can, I cut scrap granite for the composite to butt against.  Where the outriggers were, I used pieces about 20" long.  That put the pieces well out over the outriggers so no one would trip on them because they'd come up to the granite at the same time.  

I will add covers under the long granite pieces over the braces.

For ends and corners, I did like I did the dog run and just cut and polished squares a bit wider than the composite.

Because I decided to tie the deck to "The Swamp" (the sandy, rocky dog run) so the four footed overlords could better keep the neighborhood barked into submission, I added a stair down to the Swamp and built gates from the scrap pile the contractors had going next door, when a house was being built on the next lot.  That way, the dogs could be corralled when tromping about the deck.

In the end, I have a very unique fence-rail and it looks pretty decent.

[And the actual decking is next on the list]

I live in the Midwest, so lots of clay and our weather runs the full gamut. My post setting was a bit of an experiment (see end), I tried to put half or more of the full post length in the ground (so 3-4 feet, been a few years). I put an inch or two of pea gravel in the bottom of the whole and filled the rest of the hole with regular crushed limestone gravel (think that’s 3/4” grade?) and it down with every 3 to 4 inches of fill (really wish I d thought of adding water to increase compression).

The idea with the pea gravel at the bottom with larger gravel on top would create the opposite effect of a perched water table and hopefully make the water flow down below the post end.

The finally bit of experimentation was that I did sho sugi ban wood treatment rather than chemical. We will see how it goes, the part below grade I made very crispy and I made sure saturate the entire structure with oil. The above grade part is doing pretty well 3-4 years on, though the sun has and weather have stripped the carbon off. I am wondering if I should do a deeper burn next time to get the char to stay better, but in lieu of that I just go back over it with a torch every now and then. It’s a pretty short fence so it’s no issue.

Elaborating on option number 2:

Use T-bars [posts] and a post pounder

Here in the land of sand, instead of a post pounder or a post hole digger to set the post, I use high pressure water jet to open a post hole in the ground. The “water jet” is a 1/2 inch threaded pipe with a garden hose adapter (3/4” to 1/2”) and a garden hose shut-off valve. Turn on the hose with the valve closed. Position the pipe vertically, open the valve and push. The pressurized water flowing through the pipe blasts through the sand and caliche beneath with minimal effort. Turn off the valve, remove the pipe, then push 1/3 of the T-post into the ground with ease. Using a level, I straighten the post in the moist sand-silt and let it harden into place.

When my soil is not hard as good adobe brick and this means January through March, I take electric auger and drill 15 cm x 60 cm deep hole, then drop 10-13 cm diameter eucalyptus log from the trees that I cut on my land. Tamp the soil around. Ready..
I set them 3 m apart, so when the fenced areas have some planting done, I already have my reference points for rows.

A RELATIVE RABBIT TRAIL:  Fence Maintenance and Repair

I played a handyman in real life. As such, the work I did was all over the board. Especially if it gave me and excuse to buy more toys, uh, tools.

One of the things I did was, maintain and repair fences. I advertised for that and not building them because builders were a dime a dozen in the Yellow Pages, but nobody pushed those very important maintenance or repair things.

In the Pacific Northwet (Olympia, Wash.), there were a lot of cedar fences that needed attention and repairs. A good wind and a five year old post rotted in the ground made for a real need for repairs.  My very first repair job was on about 300 feet of fence. Every post was supported with concrete. That, normally, means a whole lot of digging to get the concrete and what's left of the post out to replace it with a new post.  

Probably like most here, I don't like to dig and I like digging a lot even less.  As such, I put my mind in gear to try to figure out a way to cut the amount of work down as best I could. This is what I came up with and it worked great:

(1) Pounding cedar boards free of a support 2x4 guarantees you are going to break every other one. So if they started out, at the start of the repair, in good shape, they were firewood or garbage by the time teardown was done.

To solve that problem, I used a reciprocating saw (Tiger Saw, Saws All. . . ) and a long bi-metal blade. This allowed me to slip the blade between the vertical cedar boards and the 2x and cut all the nails holding the boards.  An 8' run took just a couple minutes.

I cut the bottom first, so that the board would fall down when I cut the upper nails. If I cut the top first, it might have put too much stress on the bottom at the nails holding them and may have resulted in more damaged boards.

This allowed me to save nearly ever board on the fence, since the only problem was the rotted support posts.  That's a huge savings on a job of any significance.

(2) I brought my big Porter Cable Drill I use to stir sheetrock mud to the job, along with a spade bit, a bit extension that allowed me to reach down a couple feet, and a tulip auger (for planting).  I had other bits too, but the spade worked fine most the time.

I pulled what pieces I could out by hand. If the wood was really rotten, the auger would stir the wood up enough my big shop vac was able to suck up all the debris.  Cleaning a hole took from just a few minutes to about a half hour. That's still a lot shorter time than digging up the concrete, hauling it off, bringing in new cement and starting anew.

When done, I had clean, square holes in the cement and I was able to drop the post into the hole, though I did have to shave many of them to coax them in (high moisture content). Sand and shims secured them and the fence always ended up rock solid again.

In the end, my customers saved small fortunes and a few even made money, because I could beat other bids that were given to the insurance company, which compensated them according to the other bids they did turn in.

Kelly Craig wrote:When done, I had clean, square holes in the cement and I was able to drop the post into the hole, though I did have to shave many of them to coax them in (high moisture content). Sand and shims secured them and the fence always ended up rock solid again.

In the Pacific Wet Coast, I'd have reinstalled with a metal post holder set into concrete added to the existing concrete that was there? Keep the wood above the wet!

We've got plenty of big rocks - they grow well on my land. I'm thinking of positioning a big rock in the right spot, drilling the right size hole in it for the post holder and using an appropriate cement/glue and fencing that way. However, I've also got bunny issues, so for some tasks, I need metal fencing buried about a foot! I keep asking the owls to deal with the bunnies, but alas, they're not dealing with enough of them!

Problem is, though it's a preferable solution (the one I used for my own fence), for a customer, that would take several times longer and more than double the cost.

Jay Angler wrote:

Kelly Craig wrote:When done, I had clean, square holes in the cement and I was able to drop the post into the hole, though I did have to shave many of them to coax them in (high moisture content). Sand and shims secured them and the fence always ended up rock solid again.

In the Pacific Wet Coast, I'd have reinstalled with a metal post holder set into concrete added to the existing concrete that was there? Keep the wood above the wet!

We've got plenty of big rocks - they grow well on my land. I'm thinking of positioning a big rock in the right spot, drilling the right size hole in it for the post holder and using an appropriate cement/glue and fencing that way. However, I've also got bunny issues, so for some tasks, I need metal fencing buried about a foot! I keep asking the owls to deal with the bunnies, but alas, they're not dealing with enough of them!

An early American fence design, the snake rail fence (split rail fence) does not require a post sunk in the ground as its careful assembly provides its own support structure. Large rocks had traditionally been placed on the ground as a foundation and the lowest rail placed on top to reduce the incidents of rot. Cedar is a popular choice due to its rot-resistant properties.

Emery Brown wrote:Dig big hole with shovel in a wet winter, put pole in, backfill with clay that I've dug up from the ground, stomp down hard.
How naive am I being?

There are cedar fence posts (thin juniper logs) near our property in the Utah Desert that date to the Taylor Grazing Act (1934). The barb wire is gone, but the posts are solid.

Emery Brown wrote:Dig big hole with shovel in a wet winter, put pole in, backfill with clay that I've dug up from the ground, stomp down hard.
How naive am I being?

Ooow, I did this last winter for the rabbit-proof perimeter with Black locust poles.  Thinking I was pretty smart, I considered testing my innovation by letting them sit for a hunnerd years, then filing for a patent...

A video from the Farmhandcompanions discusses a variety of setting fence posts and what to consider with each.

Randy Eggert wrote:

Emery Brown wrote:Dig big hole with shovel in a wet winter, put pole in, backfill with clay that I've dug up from the ground, stomp down hard.
How naive am I being?

There are cedar fence posts (thin juniper logs) near our property in the Utah Desert that date to the Taylor Grazing Act (1934). The barb wire is gone, but the posts are solid.

Exactly! There are good methods for one ecosystem that may not transplant well to another. So Randy isn't being naive if he's in one of the ecosystems where a post like that will live 100 years or longer.

In my ecosystem, a "post in the ground" will live about 40 years, particularly if it is vibrated into wet dirt. In our soil, concrete is a liability, because it can actually make the post rot faster by trapping moisture. However, if you set a sturdy metal bracket into that concrete so that the wood is above ground, you might do better.

Choosing the right wood for your ecosystem is equally important. Rot resistance and strength need to be considered, along with the use of the fence. What will keep a racoon out, might not keep a bear at bay!

DIY concrete posts are on my list of things to try for the next project. I came across this little study while researching for grape vine setups. If anyone has tried these, I would be grateful for you to share your experience before I give it a try. It seems that if the post is all concrete, it may eliminate some of the concerns in the earlier posts about wood. Also, a stick of 1/2" rebar and 2 60# bags of concrete, at most, make the cost per post very reasonable if you compare with the cost of store bought PT post. You would need to get creative if working by yourself because of the weight. This post weight about 1.3x+ the weight of a PT 6x6 post.

https://projects.sare.org/sare_project/fnc07-684/

Yep, on that mention about different areas producing different results for various post setting methods.

In the Pacific Northwet, a cedar post can be trash in five years. Treated pine will hold up better. You'll get seven, or six, or eight (they rot from within, where the treatment can't get).

My personal fence, the part that is not metal pipe, sits atop stirrups resting in concrete. The bottoms of the 4x's will go decades before rot will affect them.  Generous applications of oil from various contraptions Edison couldn't have dreamed of add years to the durability of the posts.

Because I can (have tile saw, will travel up to 50'), I cut granite scraps from a fabricator's pile into squares about 6"x6", polished the edges, then glued them to the tops of each post. Rain and snow will never soak into the posts via the tops.

SIDE NOTE:  ALL the horizontal 2x's have about a 5-degree angle cut on top, so there are no real horizontal surfaces to catch and hold water, aside from the very tops of each cedar board, which gets generously oiled.