When building a privacy fence with new pickets, the width of the pickets is almost always going to shrink, leaving gaps between the pickets. Storing the wood in a dry place for a couple of months would help matters a lot.
And because pickets are not perfectly straight, having some bar clamps or pipe clamps can be very helpful. (I think I used a 60” pipe clamp and some 36” bar clamps.)
We recently had our horse pasture re-fenced (~12 acres) and it was impressive how quickly it was completed. A crew of three guys managed to complete the job in two days using two front-end loaders to remove old posts, dig new holes, and insert new posts.
I remember doing much smaller jobs using a post hole digger and muscle, taking weeks.
Interesting, but just to be clear on this point: would I be clamping all the pickets together while they are drying out so they dry out straight, or would I be somehow clamping them for a while after they are on the fence? I’m assuming the lack of straightness has to do with bowing instead of being flat, rather than the sides being crooked.
Fences here in the UK tend to be made from standardised 6 foot wide panels, and I don’t expect this is the same everywhere in the world, but most people fix these to wooden posts with a 3 inch square section, set in concrete with 1/4 of the entire length of the post underground, 3/4 above ground.
After a few years, the posts rot off at ground level and the fence falls down. Most people seem to replace them with the same thing that failed. When any fence in my garden went down, I replaced with concrete posts - they have a slot in them so a standard panel just drops in and there are standard panel-width concrete gravel boards that slot in at ground level. The finished fence looks like this:
The worst that can happen is that an aged panel decays and gets blown out of place - and it’s easy to just drop in a new panel into the slots to replace it.
I’m sure this exact solution doesn’t exist everywhere, but the key point for me is: concrete posts - even if you use use concrete stub posts and then bolt a wooden post to them - as below - it means you only ever dig each post hole once.
I don’t want to act like an authority on this; I’m just a mildly handy home owner who has stumbled through a couple of fence building projects. 4x4 posts. 2x4 horizontal rails between the posts. 6” pickets, 72” high, screwed to the horizontal rails.
Most pickets will have a slight “comma” shape, side-to-side. (Also front-to-back, but that’s not a problem, since they will get screwed down flat on the horizontal rails.) When you butt the pickets against each other along the rails, there will be gaps in the middle, or at the top or bottom, due the boards being “comma” shaped. () or )( .
The gaps might be small, or 1/2” or so. Sometimes, you can put boards with similar curves next to each other to minimize the gaps, or you can use bar clamps to force the gaps together, before finishing the screwing-in.
It can get tricky to clamp the pickets together as the fence gets longer. Occasionally I would temporarily remove a (fairly straight) installed picket to be able to clamp other pickets together. The pipe clamp would let me push 60” of pickets together. ||||||| ||||||.
Thanks for the clarification. I think I have a couple of 10’ bar clamps, or would that be too much to try all at once?
I finally got out there to start taking out the old fence. Of the 7 fence posts, the four that I got up close and personal to had all rotted just above the concrete (the others I haven’t reached yet, I’ll get those tomorrow. They were 4x4 pressure treated. I don’t know if the fact that they lasted 14 years (or more, now that I think about it) is good or bad. (Technically one of the end posts has been loose for a lot longer.) When I replace the fence, I want it to be the last time.
So I’m going to use 6x6 pressure-treated, in 10’ lengths, and bury 4’ in the ground. I am still up in the air as to whether to use concrete again, packed earth, or that foam stuff. I saw an episode of Ask This Old House recently where Tommy used some of that foam to repair a loose post, but there wasn’t much detail about how well it works.
Another issue is that our house is on a hill that slopes down away from the fence. The neighbor’s yard is actually a step down of about 18". They used to have an old fallen-down fence there, but they took down about 2/3 of it (probably afraid it would fall on their dog) and that’s the area of my fence that got the loosest fastest. I suspect that removing that fence lost some of the support the earth was giving to my fence. I’m not sure how to deal with that either.
I just get steel T-Posts and pound them into the ground with a thing I believe is called a “T-Post Pounder Inner”. They also cost less than wooden posts. I will be using those to put up some stockade fencing soon.
As far as I can tell, T-post fencing seems to be used mostly for long wire fences for livestock and such. I’m not sure they would hold up to the wind on a solid 6’ tall wood fence.
They will. Short cheap versions may not, the 7’ post needed for a 6’ fence should be as strong as a wooden one. In loose soil the same kind of techniques are used to keep it from leaning over. So in soft soil you would still have to dig a hole for concrete, but I’ve found a few sturdy rocks up against the bottom of the post will do a great deal to strengthen it. A 7’ post weighs around 10 lbs., it’s very sturdy. There are shorter light duty T-Posts for garden and yard fences but anything long enough for stockade fencing will be very sturdy.
Something some fence place says about it: https://summitfencenorth.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-using-steel-posts-for-a-wood-fence/
If you want to drive the future owner of your property mad like the previous owner of my property did, use wire to tie several rocks to the base of the post, just with a couple of inches of extra wire so you can bury them below the depth of the post. Not only does it make the post more stable it makes in near impossible to get the damn posts out of there. Especially on the first one where you have no freakin’ idea what’s going on and after digging down to the bottom of the post you still see it stuck to wires and no idea where they are going.
Some wood species are ridiculously resistant to rot. I put in a row of Osage orange (aka hedge tree) posts for my grape vines, which I truly expect could outlast me, my house, and the 21st century. Osage orange posts aren’t cheap because they are both excellent and uncommon. They may be fairly regional to the US midwest. I assume few people grow hedge trees commercially because they are a pain in the ass - They are hard on saws, full of thorns, fall over but keep growing, and produce softball sized fruit full of glue.
They are around. Growing up in Maryland we knew there a few in backyards in the area, the oranges would turn up in unusual places since they are perfect for the game of throw things at other kids. As I moved up the east coats I encountered Osage orange with less and less frequency.
Anyway, Cypress from older trees is very rot resistant. Red and White Cedar are rot resistant, the White more so but more expensive. There are several hardwoods too expensive to waste on posts. The most rot resistant and inexpensive wood posts are made from pressure treated lumber.
Good lord, I just priced up the lumber for my fence, and those 6x6 posts are $80 bucks each, or $480 for six of them. The 4x4 posts are $20. Maybe 6x6 is overkill.
Especially since I also discovered Post Protectors, made of high density polyethylene, that just slip on the bottom of the post before you put them in the ground. Has anyone ever tried those? Even at $25 each I’d still save over $200 and the smaller posts are a lot easier to get down to the yard.
4x4 posts will work fine. They’re strong enough. Are these pressure treated? I see 4x4x8 PT at Lowes for $16.88 locally.
Yes, pressure treated. They’re $19.58 around here, because everything is more in California.