Updating our Working Facilities

Gather App
simme said:
My son builds fences full time. Mostly clay in this area. When the soil gets extremely dry (drought conditions), you can beat a post to death. Whether breaker style driver or deadweight drop pounder. He puts a water tank on the truck connected to a pressure washer. Jet out a small hole with the pressure washer and then drive the post. Takes more time but lets them build fence instead of waiting out the drought.
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I've got a Shaver pounder. A few years back during a severe drought I learned to take a 5 gallon bucket and drill a bunch of small holes in the bottom... set it full of water over the NEXT post spot you want to drive... while your driving the current one. By the time you get the first one driven in, the ground is soft at the spot where you put that bucket of water.
 
artesianspringsfarm said:
ok, so here's the process and new setup. I decided I didnt want to worry about rot, slivers, and the odd rank critter anymore so I went with steel posts, steel panels, and some freestanding panels to make internal pens and to connect the pens to the working area. I'm not done by any means but this is an area where I'm confident I will always have cows so I decided to buy once, cry once.

First I graded the area:

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To deal with the rock issue, and knowing I have a few miles of hi-tensile to put up the next couple years, I added this tool to the mix:

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This is how it looked once we got steel in the ground:

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There are very few pieces of equipment that have made me smile like that post pounder. For our conditions, its asolutely amazing.

I didnt get many pictures of welding up panels or gates:

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In the end, here's what I've got so far. The working system is all under the lean-to. More pics of that later.

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When we have something that needs the chute, we will run panels to it like this, but this also shows why I dont leave them there all the time:

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How many head you planning on running here?
 
artesianspringsfarm said:
I'd heard some positive reports but I honestly still cant believe it. When you can drive a treated pine post 4' in the ground and have it be within 5 degrees of plumb in less than 2 minutes in our soil, it almost feels like it defies the laws of physics. when we sunk the first steel post, my brother in law and I just looked at each other with a goofy grin on our faces and said "I think I like this" about 50 times.
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How is the noise with it?

Ken
 
Silver said:
Couldn't agree more. I don't know how many free standing panels I have (over 100 I'm sure) but it's not enough. They have only gone up in value over time. The list of benefits is too long to list.
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Despite the price I think they're one of the best things we've bought for our place. We've built several different set ups but like you said, changing is pretty easy and the yare pretty indestructible. The ones we got were built by a guy taht welds the ends on the sucker rods instead of just leaving them floating which is a better way to do it I think. I'm going to try to get mine painted this year.
 
We've had a Danuser T3 driver for years. It's probably the cheapest driver on the market but has been a life saver. If it ever dies I'll get a newer style like the one @artis using.

@wbvs58 ours is fairly loud. I use earplugs about 75% of the time. Just depends on how many post we have to drive.
 
Stonewall Joe said:
Despite the price I think they're one of the best things we've bought for our place. We've built several different set ups but like you said, changing is pretty easy and the yare pretty indestructible. The ones we got were built by a guy taht welds the ends on the sucker rods instead of just leaving them floating which is a better way to do it I think. I'm going to try to get mine painted this year.
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There are a lot of people making them now. But it seems like it is getting harder to get them with arched feet. I won’t buy any more with the flat feet.
 
I'm pricing panels now from several places. The free standing panels seem like a good idea for perimeter fence on pens but it's hard to get the chute areas to match. If you do it like a 20' panel it is $400 and a chute with slides and a sorter is $8k. That's not including a sweep or bud box or some thing to feed the chute.
 
From reading here I feel better about all the limestone rocks I have encountered through the years fencing. Dug a lot of post holes by hand to get almost to where I needed and then a big limestone rock. Hitting those rock with a hand digger and pry bar can be hard on your body.
 
Silver said:
There are a lot of people making them now. But it seems like it is getting harder to get them with arched feet. I won't buy any more with the flat feet.
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The place I bought mine (go Bob) has arched feet on all the panels except the bow gate, which I understand but dad and I both commented immediately I would hate for all the panels to have those wobbly flat feet.
 
artesianspringsfarm said:
I like what I built so far but I already think if I did it over again, I would just do ALL freestanding panels. They are virtually unheard of up here in NY, but I am even considering just buying a trailer load of them and selling them.
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In process of building new pens. Bought the 24’ freestanding and have reconfigured 3 times to get what I need. In process of adding gates to several of them to finish out. Love the ability to reconfigure
 
jltrent said:
From reading here I feel better about all the limestone rocks I have encountered through the years fencing. Dug a lot of post holes by hand to get almost to where I needed and then a big limestone rock. Hitting those rock with a hand digger and pry bar can be hard on your body.
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We have miles and miles of stone fences still standing around here. I dont need any proof that those guys were tougher than me, but those fences still remind me all the time.
 

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