Fencing questions

I have 5ft feather-board fencing along one side and the bottom of my garden. Most of the wood posts (even new ones) have concrete studs supporting them. All panels have 3 triangular horizontals (arris rails), fixed to the posts with with arris rail brackets and galvanised screws. Uprights are nailed to the arris rails with 50mm galvanised nails.

I always use the galvanised arris rail brackets, and personally I screw everything, even the feather edge boards. Normally use ordinary plated "quicksilver" type screws which I reckon provide sufficient corrosion protected.

Screwing makes it easy to adjust the spacing at ends, if you need to, also it's then trivial if you ever need to replace a single board because of splitting, pets, children.....

Double rail is fine round our way, obviously triple will give a bit more wind resistance in exposed areas especially with 1.8m boards.

If you are looking for long life, you would probably be better off looking at composite fencing, concrete panel fencing or build a brick wall.

Examples of the first two:

The second type might give you some entertainment when the local scrotes karate-kick it in a few years time ...

Can't say I have ever seen it done like that and the usual failure mode in gales and tornados is the whole bench goes over due to the vertical posts breaking at the bottom or pulling out of the ground like substantial trees do rather than the vertical palings coming off the two horizontal rails. Certainly worth screwing using non rusting screws if the vertical palings are prone to splitting but I don't see any point in 3 horizontal rails myself.

Much easier to screw now with decent drill drivers.

The first type may expand and bend in the sun ;)

Likely to be more resistant than a wooden fence and I believe that the one seen doing that in a YouTube video lost his leg, so probably won't be doing it again.

Huh, turns out that what we've been quoted for (Jackson's Fencing) does three horizontals for the height of new fence we're getting, and uses stainless nails.

Nearly 30 years ago I built a wood fence at the end of our previous garden. There were posts 8 foot or so apart, with metal sections set in concrete, between which I set extra posts, set slightly back (an inch or so). I then made really sold panel from 1? thick unplanned wood.

The garden backs onto a path I occasionally include in my walks.

The fence is still there - it looks as good as the day it was put up.

Concrete stub posts will extend the life hugely compared with treated timber in soil. Don't forget Hedgehog passageways:-)

Not actually seen it done but I rather like the idea of vertical boards spaced alternately either side of the arris rails. Depending on the lap, the wind can get through without losing much privacy.

No, there were no gaps- other than the tiny ones where the unplanned edges didn?t meet perfectly. I cut alternate planks at an angle to give a series of points.

A good coat of REAL creosote (available at the time to the public) helped. Plus I soaked the ends of the extra posts in it for a week before setting them in concrete.

It replaced a thin, flimsey, wavy lap fence which suffered damage.

I?d built something similar but much shorter in the house before, although it had a gate as well.

Likewise I made a similar one in our current house, although I used feather edged board as it is actually a large gate and I needed to reduce the weight.

Nobody seems to have attacked the much more vulnerable wooden fence in the past 15 years.

I any case, if somebody does kick a concrete panel out, the repair is simple - clean off the blood, return the severed foot and slot a new panel into the top of the posts.

I'd like to see measurements or calculations of how much less wind load there is on those "hit and miss" fences compared with solid panels but I'm sceptical how much wind given IIRC a first approximation is "if you can't see through it then the wind can't get through it". Then you add for interference effects.

Way beyond my skill set:-)

Got to be less than solid. Hedges rarely blow over:-) Agricultural guess

No point round here - nothing but badgers. I haven't seen a hedgehog in all the 12 years we've been here.

I don't see them (alive or squished) as often, used to hear them snuffling around at night, double glazing probably accounts for that.

I left the person door of my garage open one night, and went I went into the garage found a rather large hedgehog in there trying to get out. Also thought one had fallen into the empty pond at my dad's house and died, but when I picked it out it was just playing dead, in the time I took to find it a container of water, it buggered off.

Not feather-board, but when I replaced a fence I used galvanised brackets to fasten the panels between the posts and st. st. pan head self-tappers from SF. I can remove a panel very quickly - saved a lot of time when helping with next door's fence, as the round trip via the usual toute was about 80m.

I put the panels between the posts as that left enough of a panel to do a short return, so saving another panel that would have been cut down anyway.

Since the save the badger campaigns, hedgehogs no longer inhabit Britain