Fence problem

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Dusty Britches

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Branchville, Texas
A few weeks ago we cleared a fence line and started building a new fence. I hired a young man to help set the posts and I ran the wire by myself. I set my end braces with single Hs and they are 290 yards (870 feet) apart. All H brace posts are RR cross ties or telephone poles placed 4 feet in the ground. Due to the soil structure - clay and sandy loam we generally do not use concrete. The ground will break it up on the 12" posts. Smaller posts are ok but we seem to have much less trouble when we don't concrete. I ran 5 strand of high tensile tight enough to sing. It was really nice. Obviously I'm not working very fast but before the rain started, all I had to do was tack the tension posts and clip tposts.

The neighbor's place has a low spot a few yards from my fence that fills with water and drains through my corner. There is a bull hole in front of the brace that we had intended to fill before the rain but ran out of time. Actually, the weather guys said to expect a 1/2-1". They were a tad off. :D

2 weeks ago we received an astonishing 5 inches of rain over an 8 hour period. I guess the 4 month dry spell ended with that. The water drained right though one end and that H Brace shifted about 3 -4 inches but very little of the soil washed out. From the other end of the line to about half way down which is where we stopped, the posts stayed straight and the line stayed tight. From that point to the Hbrace the wire now sags substantially and there's no doubt that I will have to straighten the Hbrace and a few of the tension posts.

Here's several photos.

You can see the water here across the fence. My tension post is also leaning. The next few photos just walk down the line from left to right.
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The panoramic of those photos:
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The round post in the middle of the H brace is actually about 18" behind it and is on my neighbor's place. My fence sits on my property line.
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Here's my question - should I just use my tractor (JD5525) in line with the fence to straighten the brace and then just add soil to fill the hole? Or should I splice the wire, straighten it and add another post to make it a double H brace? And finally, I'm hesitant to channel that water because of erosion. The sheet wash effect doesn't rip out the soil but I think a channel will soon become a ditch.
 
Pull the brace and redo it, it will continue to be a problem otherwise.

Best thing would be to weld a pipe brace to the green corner. Going across the ditch with the horizontal.
I guess it's not your brace and that might not be possible.

In that case move the brace out of the ditch and hang a gate across it.
Never hurts to have a gate on a property line when a bull jumps the fence.
 
Yes Sir, I would like to do weld to the green corner but it's not possible.

That ditch is the bull hole that we are back filling with soil. Yes it will be a lot of soil but it won't fill or erode. It just from the bulls fighting over time. We put a hot wire up that stopped that.
 
Yes Sir, I would like to do weld to the green corner but it's not possible.

That ditch is the bull hole that we are back filling with soil. Yes it will be a lot of soil but it won't fill or erode. It just from the bulls fighting over time. We put a hot wire up that stopped that.
How far apart are the posts on your H brace? I have found here anything closer than 12 to 14 feet only acts as the brace being a Jack.
 
Pull the brace and redo it, it will continue to be a problem otherwise.

Best thing would be to weld a pipe brace to the green corner. Going across the ditch with the horizontal.
I guess it's not your brace and that might not be possible.

In that case move the brace out of the ditch and hang a gate across it.
Never hurts to have a gate on a property line when a bull jumps the fence.


The more I think about this, the more I like the idea of hanging a gate across the ditch. When it dries up I will do that.
 

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