Im going to begin fencing my property,for cattle,goats. I was going to start with building some corner posts-braces and use metal t-posts in between 200-225 ft sections. Does it make any difference as to when I set braces so they stay in ground. Does the moon phases have anything to do with that,or is that an old wives tale.
Go 4' down with corner posts and tamp the heck out of them as you put the dirt back in and I don't think any phase of the moon will pull them. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
-thanks for the advice,have had lots of rain all year past,dug a few holes and they filled with water. Put in a couple of treated pine posts,but have lots of locusts here,I'll just cut and use. Was thinking of going with 5 strands of barbwire. I want to put about 5 steers on land this coming spring,thought I'd get a couple of goats to help clear some of the brush. I'm thinking they be more apt to stay within the fence,with the cattle,or am I wrong about this?
I had to "mud in" a couple of posts with braces a couple of weeks ago. As soon as I started to stretch the wire, the post started to come out of the ground. So I just tacked the wire up for now. Hopefully after the ground settles, I'll be able to stretch the wire.
For bracing I had a horizontal wood brace (landscape timber) and a brace wire running from the bottom of the corner post to above the horz. brace on the bracing post. For corners and ends, this has always worked well for me. For bracing in the middle of the run I run two brace wires as a cross.
That's the problem I've been having,the ground is so wet with all the rain we've had all year long. I was thinking of just building all the brace posts,and waiting to put wire on and stretch later,but it seems it will be wet until the end of June. I wanted to have it all done by mid April,so I could put some stocker cattle on property. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]
I've never used pea gravel so don't know about that. My experience tho is that a post set in wet dirt will always be loose. They won't tighten up when the ground dries.
I guess whether pea gravel works or not depends on your soil type, climate, etc. I'd heard about it being a good idea, so I got a load of pea gravel for that purpose when I built a fence around my vegetable garden. Seemed to work fine initially, but when summer came, the ground got dry, that clay developed big cracks, and the pea gravel disappeared down the cracks, leaving all the posts loose. I hauled dirt and packed into the void around the posts. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]
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thought Texas Pea Gravel would be a fence in itself
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I used the little imported stuff. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] This reminds me of the stuff my brothers called "Alaskan pea gravel" on some of their roads (as well as some on the Alaska highway in Canada); you know, that stuff that ranges in size from baseball to basketball size. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]