Fence Post Replacement -- I may have already made a mistake.. advice sought......

Aug 12, 2006 2 Replies

Wood fence.



Somewhere between 20 - 25 year sold.



Pacific Northwest, Willamette Valley.



Old wooden post rotted out.



New 8 foot pressure treated post.



Dug out all the old post, which was 2 foot buried in dirt, with six foot above ground.--



-had about a 4 inch wide "collar" of cement / concrete around post, going down only about 8 inches. In other words, bottom of 4" x 4" post was at least 16 inches, below concrete mass.



Rotted out in only 26 years. Sheesh.



Anyway, many hours (don't ask) later, really good post hole down about 28 inches below grade, and all of rotted post out. (Bless neighbors who own their own post hole diggers, which double as clam digging machines on the Oregon coast.).



Yaddah, yaddah, yaddah. Hole dug, post placed. Post plumbed.



So we decided to use stone in the hole instaed of concrete.



Pulled the post, pourded stone, tamped stone with a with 2" x 4".



Put post in. plumbed and leveled post.



Poured a lot more stone in 2" pours, tamped. Poured 2 inch lifts, tamped. Wound up with about a 2 inch sloped cone above grade around the pos.



I have about 20 more posts to fix in this yard. I'll be doing one a month.



I'm wondering If I havre made a mistake by using concrete vs. stone vs. anything else



Thoughts / comments about concrete vs. stone vs. anything else....?


TIA



Jim McLaughlin



Reply address is deliberately munged. If you really need to reply directly, try: jimdotmclaughlinatcomcastdotcom



And you know it is a dotnet not a dotcom address.


Hmmm, At my last house I built a fence with cedar 100%. No cencrete, no stone or anything, just dirt but I hade sure water runs away from post by piling up the dirt in dome shape. I moved from there after 20 years, nothing was wrong yet, just needed another coat of stain.

It is also a good practice to put at least 6" of stone under the post so that the dirt does not directly contact the endgrain of the post, the gravel also helps to drain water away from the bottom of the post too.

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