Corner posts for 5-strand ??

[El_Putzo]

You guys are making me jealous. Lots of places around here where you'd be lucky to get a post in the ground 6 inches, much less 6 foot.

As of late we've been using 6 inch by 8 foot galvanized I-beams (Old highway guard rail posts). 3 per corner with 7/8 sucker rod X bracing. We've got a Shaver HD-10 that will drive them through most ledge rocks and any hard pan, but occasionally we have to move to the side to get them the desired depth of 3 to 3.5 feet.

 

[Limomike]

thats the way some of our land is.. filled with lots of limestone rock. Gotta work the T-posts in around them.

 

[tytower]

I don't do H-braces at true corners anymore.. Where the fence line begins or ends and there's a straightline pull, yes, but not corners.. For corners, I do what I believe Dun calls the "floating brace," which is basically a diagonal post with the upper end cut into the upright and the bottom resting on a flat rock.. I usually give the upright a little backward rake, just to give the brace a little more leverage against the fence.. Add a loop of hi-tensile around the bottoms, parallel to the ground, and it WILL NOT kick out.

I've got one like it holding back a 6-strand hi-tensile fence in soft ground, with 160lbs of concrete around the upright.. Instead of kicking the diagonal brace out under the load, it's trying to lift the whole corner out of the ground -- concrete and all -- as it wants to tip the entire brace over into the pasture.. It lifted out about three inches and held...

Kinda weird to walk past it and see the "lip" of the concrete out of the ground, but it's not going anywhere.. I added that brace there after every H-brace configuration I could think of failed miserably and completely..

If you look at the forces here the pull of the wire when strained uses the inner brace post as a fulcrum and with the inner post tied to the corner post properly with a top hat accross and diagonal brace , it tries to lift the corner post up and out of the ground .

Usually this is pretty hard to do but if your corner post is not in properly well . A diagonal brace alone does exactly as above . It places a lot more lifting force on the corner pole and is not as reliable as H braces and when it slackens a bit cattle knock it off by rubbing against it

 

[backhoeboogie]

You guys are making me jealous. Lots of places around here where you'd be lucky to get a post in the ground 6 inches, much less 6 foot.

I set one of my gate posts through a slab of 16 inch limestone. There are lots of places on ridges that I take the backhoe to pull out layers of limestone.

Pick up that limestone slab and drop it. It breaks into big blocks. Jack-In-The box uses 1400 lb pieces in their landscape to protect their speaker and billboard system. It has to be atleast 14 inches thick. Lanscapers pay $55 a ton. I have sold several hundred tons of it.

 

[Caustic Burno]

Six foot deep holes, what do you dig them with? The handles on a manual post hole diggger will not close and pickup dirt at that depth, unless the hole is very large in dia.

I asked the same thing. He had a skid steer with an aurger on the front. I looked at some at a dealership but decided I'd just settle for 3-4 foot deep holes.

Built a homemade extension out of a Model T axle welded to a store bought auger and made a jin pole for it to dig corners.

 

[ga. prime]

Here's a simple design that will prevent the corner post from coming out of the ground. Tie it down with a mobile home tie-down and a piece of 12.5 gauge wire and tensioner. I've made some pulls longer than the NW Manitoba winter on this kind of setup and never pulled the corner up. There is no tie-down on the pull going to the left because it only goes in the woods 100 or so feet and corners on a red maple.

 

[novatech]

I pulled some out of another mans pasture that were installed in the 60's. They were 2 5/8" drill stem double H braces with 18" concrete 4' deep. I was amazed that they were not rusted out. They had put a taper on the concrete where it met the post. I reinstalled the braces after cutting off one section, concrete and all. The weight of the concrete was enough ballast that I could stretch the wire without backfilling the holes.

 

[frenchie]

Here's a simple design that will prevent the corner post from coming out of the ground. Tie it down with a mobile home tie-down and a piece of 12.5 gauge wire and tensioner. I've made some pulls longer than the NW Manitoba winter on this kind of setup and never pulled the corner up. There is no tie-down on the pull going to the left because it only goes in the woods 100 or so feet and corners on a red maple.

looks good the wood angle rails from the corner post down to the others...would really help as well

 

[cmjust0]

If you look at the forces here the pull of the wire when strained uses the inner brace post as a fulcrum and with the inner post tied to the corner post properly with a top hat accross and diagonal brace , it tries to lift the corner post up and out of the ground .

Well, the flat stone under the bottom of the diagonal is actually the fulcrum point.. But, yeah, that's pretty much what happens.. Still, the fence would really have to put a lot of mustard on the brace to get the corner to tip plumb over the fulcrum point..

Usually this is pretty hard to do but if your corner post is not in properly well . A diagonal brace alone does exactly as above . It places a lot more lifting force on the corner pole and is not as reliable as H braces and when it slackens a bit cattle knock it off by rubbing against it

I could have done an h-brace oriented directly into the corner, but I've not seen that h-braces place any less lifting force on the corner than a single diagonal.. Reason being, there's still a diagonal brace wire connected to the bottom of the corner which, when stressed, will act to pull the corner up and out of the ground..

Most times with h-braces, we're talking 9ga wire which will stretch first, allowing the brace to lean before pulling out.. However, I use two loops of 12.5ga hi-tensile connected by a strainer.. It doesn't stretch.. It'll either pull through the strap on the strainer, or lift the corner out -- but it won't stretch..

I know this from experience, as I had one that tore through the strainer and caused the h-brace to fail.. When I repaired the brace, I reinforced the new strainer by hanging two fence staples over the back of the strap.. Since it couldn't pull through the strainer, it began lifting the end post out of the ground. Not good..

All this was in a corner which was interrupted by a little-used gate.. In other words, two straight runs which happened to go 90* from one another..

After the one end post began to pull out, I removed both h-braces and the gate, spliced the wire together with square knots, and replaced it all with a single corner post and a diagonal "floating brace." Gave the corner a backward rake for leverage, put a sack and a half of concrete in the hole, let it set up good, then attached the diagonal post and brace wire.. Tensioned the fence, and voila.. It hasn't moved since.

So far as the brace going slack and cows knocking it loose, it never really goes slack if you use 12.5ga hi-t for your brace wire, and you keep your fence properly tensioned.. Plus, I always notch my corner to accept the diagonal and spike it all together. If it getting knocked loose ever becomes a problem, I figure I can run a hot wire or two from one side of the corner to the other and keep them away from it altogether.

 

[grubbie]

I'm with hurleyjd,..I use 2 7/8 oilfield pipe, set in the ground 3.5 to 4 feet with a couple sacks of quickrete. But I mix it in the hole with a 5 gallon bucket of water. Dump a third of the bag, a little water and mix a little with a post hole spade. Then just keep going till the hole is full. Works good for me here but we have pretty dry ground. I strongly suggest steel, but not everyone has access to a welder either.

 

[Hippie Rancher]

We usually use rr ties or telephone poles - at least 3-4 feet deep, 6 feet apart, 4x4 cross piece notched in and double strands of regular 9 (or is it 9.5?) ga. barbed wire for the ties.

Two years ago we ran a cross fence up a mountain and no way to get the ties up there so packed 4 inch angle iron and bolted it together. Had the kids haul up single gallon jugs of water and then packed a sack of redi-mix up on horseback. (that is a story for another day - had to change those plans in mid-stream when the old horse fell)

chipping the holes out of rock by hand shortened two digging bars and sure wore out the guy that did it :lol: