Hello all,
I have two fence posts to set and being a lazy sort I'd rather like to bore the hole with some kind of power tool.
A bit of searching has turned up "earth augers" which seem to be large two-handed bit-turning thingys, does anything similar exist for a normal drill? Perhaps the same shape and size as a plaster mixing paddle?
Thanks Jon
no chance. Yiu need massive torque and slow RPM
MY advice is to either drive the posts
Something like this maybe?
Father-in-law has a very big drill so power/torque should not be an issue.
JP
Whoops, forgot link:
You can hire powered augers, but it needs two people to operate it but like all augers if you have particularly Stoney subsoil it is useless.
Richard
Hmm. Yes when you get about 8-9 inches down it suddenly gets very hard.
Oo-er.
Perhaps I will just dig the bastards out. Pah!
JP
Holding onto it will be
Its the physical ability to actually stop the thing winding up
Thats why you need two long bars in the hand tool version. To get the leverage
And, even that is marginal in sticky wet clay.
Correction, Speedy hire have one that looks like a one man operation.
Richard
Borrow a Shov-Holer.
:-)
They wouldn't work on sticky wet clay anyway as the stuff will stick again as soon as the auger has gone in and it will take a winch to get it out.
Buy one of these
I *normally* put round fence posts up to 4 inches in with a post thumper (metal cylinder with two handles, closed at one end). I just put in a 6 inch square post for a 9 foot gate, about two feet deep, using a manual auger, around £25 from Amazon, plus postcrete. Took about half an hour.
A lot depends on your ground condition, and *whether it is a fence post or a gate post*.
You need to be doing a lot to justify even renting a powered auger.
I watched 2 guys digging post holes the other day to repair a fence blown down at Easter. The used the tool listed above to remove the loosened 'earth' clay and builders rubble but losened it first using something like Screwfix 62496 - oost hole digger working to a depth of
2-3ft.Malcolm
Last one I did was with a masonry drill (longest one I could find). Then the longest cold chisel I could find. At least your hole doesn't end up way too big
Yes have you ever watched the gear needed to do a soil core for archaeology? A drilling rig, and some seriously low geared mechanism and hydraulic rams asI recall. Brian
A lot depends on the type of soil and the water table at the site. Brian
Its the holding of the other end. I seem to recall the person goes around and the bit stays still in most comedy shows on diy I've seen in this scenario!
Maybe you can use explosives? Brian
In slightly clayey and somewhat stony soil, with some holes that had to be close to size due to being near a bank, I used a 5' crowbar to loosen the soil then a decent post-hole tool - something like
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