Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
RULES OF THUMB FOR
FENCE CORNERS AND ENDS
Wooden posts that are used for corners and ends should be buried
to at least a third of their height, and a little deeper doesn't hurt
anything. So an 8-foot post (2.4 m) should have at least 2.5 feet
(76 cm) below the surface, and 3 feet (90 cm) is even better. If the
post needs to support a heavy wooden or metal gate, it needs to be
at least 4 feet (1.2 m) deep to counterbalance the weight of the gate.
The soil that you replace around the post needs to be well
tamped for compaction. If you live in a really sandy area where
adequate compaction is hard to get, there are a variety of earth
anchors that can be used to help secure the posts. Some folks
place wooden posts in concrete, but that's a bad choice: They lay
out unnecessary labor and dollars, and wooden posts in concrete
often rot at the ground level sooner than posts that are simply
buried in the soil.
Post detail
T-post
Diagonal strainer
Corner posts are important for sturdy fence construction, especially on permanent
fences. These are the most common styles of corner bracing.
(Redrawn from David Pratt, “Grounding Electric Fences,”
Livestock and Range Report #914,
fall 1991)
