The fence is falling down - and the neighbour has been very good about not complaining, so I promised I would replace it this spring.
I've decided to make this one easy to repair so I will be setting 2"x 1/4" angle iron into concrete. Nominally 2' above ground and 2' below. Local forge can supply, cut and drill so that saves some effort.
To this I will bolt 3" 6' wooden fence posts, clear of the ground - then fit
6' panels between. Should beat the hell out of metposts for longevity and strength. Not my idea - a carpenter friend did this and says it works. also neater than concrete stubs, especially of you route a rebate into the fence post for the iron.Anyway, the neighbour has a dog so this needs to be a fairly quick operation
- couple of days max.
To save save work I am going to offset the new fence by half a panel to the old (which has a half panel anyway) - so I will not be fighting old lumps of concrete digging the post holes.
The hard bit as I see will be setting and holding the iron while the concrete sets. I have 2 theories - but I wondered if anyone had better ideas?
1) Screw disposable wooden battens between the irons to maintain 6'3" spacing and then use short diagonals onto pegs in the ground to hold the iron "floating" in the correct place and vertical. Sounds fiddly.2) add another foot to the iron, add a foot of 20mm shingle to the botton of the post hole and hammer the iron in and after tweaking, reply on that to hold while the concrete sets.
I will probably be lazy and hire a hole auger as I'll be doing a whole run on one go. Be using a string concrete (C20 or better), not "postcrete" as these are designed to not ever come out.
Clever time saving cool ideas welcome :)
Also - what panels? The standard garden centre woven panels piss me off as they are so weak. OTOH anything decent seems to cost an absolute arm and leg. 4' willow with a 2' trellis on top would look nice, but again, seems expensive.
Cheers,
Tim