Bought a post auger

Even easier if you hire a Bobcat with an auger attachment.

Colin Bignell

Maybe so Colin but this is luxury for me compared to the old way, plus when I am finished I will sell it on ebay and recoup the cost, that appeals to me even more :-)

Got a link to which one?

Yes, but all those marks on the lawn do not go down well with the owner.. Brian

Depending on where you are, I'll buy it off you.

I'll bet you don't have flints over clay in your subsoils:-)

I use a tractor mounted auger which is useless in dry weather as there is no provision to *push* the auger into the ground.

We do! Horrible.

SDS and long wrecking bar.

I bought one a few years back and it was neither use nor ornament. Probably a cheap and cheerful and totally useless design.

So bad that I gave it away rather than trying to sell it on.

A long iron bar for breaking up the soil and one of those 'double spoon' contraptions for lifting the soil out seems to work much better for me.

Cheers

Dave R

Interesting, on the last one I had the thread ended at the top on a circular plate with a flap on it. The idea being that you could pull it out and the loose soil would not fall back into the hole. As a lot of the holes that I needed to make were in sandy soil this was most useful.

Colin Bignell

I think I got mine from Toolstation, not at all expensive

In our soil (thin topsoil on top of clay) the auger is very much quicker, easier, and neater.

I also use a post banger thingy as we put in relatively temporary (half a season) wooden posts for horse fencing.

I`ll not be selling for best part of this year as on hols for a month in May and in no rush to complete the fence before then (weather). Opposite end of country (scotland) I just done a couple of holes to try it out but waiting on some sunshine. To be honest you would be as cheap buying new, mine was around £22 new inc postage, i`ll probably not be far off that selling on later.

On Thursday 28 March 2013 21:12 ss wrote in uk.d-i-y:

Do you mean a T-bar with a screw on the bottom? Or something fancier?

A T-bar with a screw on the bottom

Variable results depending on soil. Mine worked fine in the UK at two properties. One was a sandy soil, the other was river clay with a lot of soil rich in humus over it. In Italy it was useless - the soil is glacial boulder clay and the only solution for setting posts is a pneumatic hammer and a great deal of time.

In a couple of places the boulders were so large that I used a diamond core drill to make a post hole.

Only one I've used was a sort of bucket with teeth on it to cut the bottom of the hole and collect the earth in the bucket.

Almost useless; there was always a root somewhere.

Andy

OK if ground is reasonably stone free ... I tried a powered one (2 handle motor on top) ....it threw you all over the place, every time it hit a stone it jumped sideways.

Useless of poor ground ... would assume this hand powered one would be the same. I looked at Bobcat with auger, but too expensive to hire.