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| Sara
07-11-2002 19:02:15
63.215.113.224
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Hello! We're gonna put up alot of fence & wanna know what tricks you all have up your sleeves for digging post holes. How do you all go about it? Any tricks to using a rented auger? Cement? Any particular manufacturer you like? Thanks all - Sara
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| Dan G/Soganofla
07-13-2002 19:33:01
199.44.53.3
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| How much fence are you talkin' about? If you're like the guy with the 50'x100' "pasture", just get some posthole diggers and do it by hand. If you need to set a few hundred posts, rent an auger. Be aware; it is still a lot of work! Forget the cement, if you're using wood posts. It traps water around the post, and shortens the life, without offering any benefit. Just tamp the dirt around the post with a piece of pipe, and it will stay right where you put it. Brace your corners well, and stretch your wire tight, and it will come out fine. What are ya fencin' in, anyway?
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| cyril keating
04-11-2005 14:00:02
70.21.4.223
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We are digging post holes behind a house for a deck. We have gone down 8 feet and not reached soil but we have reached a water table that is constantly filling the hole with water. We know it is not a pipe that we hit. How do we stop the water from flowing? and then how do we prep the hole to set the footers in cement? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Cyril
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| cyril keating
04-11-2005 13:59:27
70.21.4.223
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We are digging post holes behind a bouse for a deck. We have gone down 8 feet and not reached soil but we have reached a water table that is constantly filling the hole with water. We know it is not a pipe that we hit. How do we stop the water from flowing? and then how do we prep the hole to set the footers in cement? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Cyril
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| Hal/WA
07-12-2002 10:06:36
208.8.194.32
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| I have built a lot of barb wire fence. I prefer to have the fences as straight as possible, so I use plastic baler twine for a guide. We tried using a PTO auger digger on our property, but most places, it is just too rocky. This causes the digger to bounce around and might tear up the auger. I carefully place my corner posts, using railroad ties, usually in hand dug holes as deep as I can get them. A few times I have dug post holes with a backhoe, when I have had one rented for other jobs. Most of the other posts I use are the heavier weight T posts. I have a heavy post pounder with handles and try to pound posts as early in the Spring as I can--when the ground is still mushy from the frost coming out of it. It is so much easier to pound posts then. It is already pretty dry in my area to pound in T posts. The thing I like about the T posts is that I will probably not have to do much to them for the rest of my life once I have them properly set. We used to use cedar posts when I was a kid and we carefully soak treated them for months. There may be a few of them still holding up fences 40 years later on the property, but they are not in good condition. The metal posts we put in at the same time are a little rusty, but are all still holding up the fences just fine. And in rocky soil, they are so much easier to put in, if you do it at the right time of year.
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| Don in Ok
07-12-2002 08:22:56
198.81.17.168
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| I just put up about 10,000 feet of pipe fence so I will pass on what little I know. Half the job is marking your staight line for the fence. If you use a good yellow mason string you can pull it very tight to get a good straight line. I use orange parking lot marking paint to mark all my holes along the string with an x. It makes it ease to see when you dig. As for the holes, if you dont have any one who can loan you a tractor with a PTO driven auger I would go down to the tool rental place and rent a bobcat with a auger. It mounts where the bucket goes and will dig a whole in about 30 seconds. If you need to do a lot of holes you can rent them at noon on Sat. and keep it till monday for the single day price about $125. If you have a need you can get a bucket for the bobcat and change it out with the auger to get two jobs done that weekend. Good luck Don
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| 8NTX
07-12-2002 07:56:50
208.188.21.173
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I helped a friend of mine put in a fence a few years ago, and he had a pretty effective post-hole digger rigged made from a garden hose and 1" galvanized pipe. The pipe was about 4' long, and on one end he had attached a female hose fitting, and the other end he cut off at an angle with a hacksaw to make a point. Just hook the hose up, turn on the water, and let the water pressure do the work. The hole is not real pretty or uniform, but it only took about 2 minutes to dig the hole out of the black gumbo we have here in the Dallas area. Of course this will only work if you have water nearby, adequate pressure, and no large rocks. The holes ended up an average of 2.5 ft. deep; we dug about 40 of 'em in 2 hours or so. Ended up being a lot easier than when I rented a two-man power auger to put my fence in.
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| Danny in CO
07-12-2002 06:17:52
12.13.250.95
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| What kind of post are you going to use? If you use t-posts, get a t-post driver. If you use wood posts, get a powered auger. Like Kraig said, I use one on the back of my tractor. It really saves the back. Danny
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| kraig WY
07-11-2002 19:32:25
63.229.153.139
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Best way I know is to have a auger on the back of a tractor a bit smaller then the post you're gonna plant. After drilling the hole, set the post and push it in with loader. Course that assumes you have a big enough tractor w/enough down force on the loader to push the post to the bottom of the hole. If you got many post to put in then the augers the way to go. If you damp them right you'll not need any cement. Regular idiot sticks are only good for finding rocks in my point of view. Put in your corner post and stretch the bottom wire to use as a guide to get your post straight in line. Its no harder to put in a straight fence and looks a lot better. When you get it all up then you'll get a flash flood to wash it out for you.
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