What you will see here is a book on fences being written. It may be a little disorganized at times. Sorry about that. I figure it is the only way I will ever come close to writing a book about electric fences. Opinions, suggestions, comments, hate mail are all welcome. Just remember, my way is not the only way. Use what you want and trash the rest... Rick

THE BEGINNING...Somewhat random for now! stay tuned for the winter - updates planned during the crappy weather months

The gates in front of my barn. This is a fairly complex arrangement consisting of a corner brace, with two gates attached to it. The smaller gate, used for normal access, is 6 feet long. The longer gate is 16 feet long, and is used when tractor access is desired.

A view from the barn of the 16 foot long gate. The cans that hang from the gate are there most of the time, to get the llamas used to it. Cans hanging from a pack saddle are frequently used as an obstacle in a Packing Class obstacle course. The PVC pipe that comes out of the ground is the feed for the fence from the fence charger. Inside the PVC pipe is high voltage insulation stranded wire. It is similiar to that used on high performance race cars, and a little expensive to buy new (i got it for free, it was being throw out). My local farm supply store carries a high voltage wire that is more reasonably priced, intended to be used for burried fence connections. The PVC pipe adds a little more insulation, as well as mechanical protection to the wire. Note the Red/Black switch mounted on the horizontal member of the brace structure. It allows the fence to be de-activated without going to the remotely located fence charger and unplugging it.

While THIS corner post holds up a couple of gates, it is the same arrangement that is used to secure the end of my tension fences. A tension fence with 5 wires, each tensioned to several hundred pounds of force, will rip a weak end brace right out of the ground. These corner posts will stay put!

A tension fence requires very sturdy and braces. A corner assembly like that shwon here will take about 8 hours to make/install. Seems like a lot of work, doesn't it?

HOWEVER... The beauty of a tension fence is that it requires very little to hold it up between the corner posts. On flat ground, a support every 75 to 100 feet is all that is required. Think about this... how long does it take to dig a hole? With a non-tension fence, you will be putting posts in every 15-20 feet. That is about 5 times as many holes, and 5 times as many posts as with a tension fence system.

SOOoooo... While the corner posts take a bit of work to erect, the fence in between the corner posts goes up real fast It is also much cheaper to erect, as there are only 1/5 th as many post to pay for!

A view from the barn of the corner brace. Not the bundle of wires running diagonally in each H-Section. This is a bundle of 7 12g fence wires. This bundle of wires is what makes the brace so rigid.

10 inch pieces of "rebar" join the horizontal portion of the End Brace to the vertical members. The rebar goes into 1/2 inch pre-drilled holes, both on the horizontal and the two vertical members. Do not drill all the way through the two vertical posts - about 4 1/2 inches deep is plenty. Drill the horizontal post deep enough to accept the rest of the 10" piece of rebar. Four 16 penny nails also protrude from the ends to prevent the horizontal member from rotating after assembly. The nails have had their head cut off, and the wood was pre-drilled with a 1/8 inch drill about an inch deep. The nails are tapped in, pointy end out, with a hammer. Be careful here. This thing could hurt if you came in contact with it!

A Super-Duty home-made insulator... A 3/8 inch diameter by 4 1/2 inch long lag bolt passes through: a 3/8 inch washer, a 1/4 inch long piece of 1/2 inch PVC conduit, a "corner insulator", A 1/2 long piece of 1/2 inch PVC conduit, and into a pressure treated 6x6 landscaping timber. The "corner insulator" in this picture is plastic. I prefer porcelin insulators if I can find them, but the porcelin ones are rarely in stock at the local farm supply store. I have found porcelin insulators pounded into trees in my back yard that are probably around 50 years old, and I have never found one that was broken.

A closeup of the bundle of wires that make up the diagonal brace. The wires are held in position on the post by a 1/4 inch lag screw with a washer on it on either side of the post. The screw should be at least 1 1/2 inch long, and about 1/4 inch of it protrudes from the post to capture the bundle of wires. The bundle is wrapped diagonally between the two posts that make up the fence brace a total of 3 1/2 times, to give a total of 7 strands. About 2 feet of excess on either end is wrapped tightly around the bundle as shown here to tighten up the wires.

A conventional nail-on plastic insulator holding up the bottom strand of wire on a run of fence. That is not exactly snow, it is solid ice, 7 inches or so thick. As the ice melts, it will pull the wire to the ground, and most likely break the insulator. The first year that I put up a fence in my pasture, I had to replace EVERY bottom insulator after heavy ice destroyed them. HINT: If you do use plastic nail-in insulators in snow country, use short ones (these are short ones in this picture). They are stronger than the long ones and will have a little better chance of surviving.

I have yet to see one of THESE insulators, with a solid 3/8 inch lag screw going through it, break!

These fence tensioners are burried in ice. The insulator that holds it has held up for 3 winters now, with no sign of deterioration.

It's hard to show so much in such a little picture. Here is and H-brace holding up a 12 foot gate. The gate is not crooked, the ground is simply not level here. The gate was hung level to make it easy to open and close. In the left side of the picture is an intermediate support post. The distance between the H-Brace and the support post is 75 feet. A strand of yellow electric fence tape is wrapped around the second from the top wire to aid in making the fence more visable, The yellow fence tape must be supported by a steel tension wire. If you try to just string up the tape between posts that are 75 feet apart, you will break it before it looks anywhere near straight. A bit of trivia....the rock in the background is granite, about 25 feet in diameter. The boys love playing king-of-the-hill on it!

A closeup of an intermediate support post. The bottom wire is 8 inches off the ground, and the rest are spaced 12 inches apart.

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So you have a charger, and it says you need a ground? Whats a "ground"?

A ground is an electrical connection between the charger and the dirt you are standing on. When you, or your critter, touches the fence, current flows through the fence, through you, out your feet, and into the ground.

It doesn't stop there, however. It has to get back to the charger. If the current can not make it back to the charger, it simply will not flow. If no current flows, there is no ZAP, and you chase your llama, child, uncle Fred, or whatever you have fenced in all over the neighborhood!

SOOoo, you need this ground connection thingy to let the current that flowed out of your feet and into the ground back into the charger.

Now, listen closely for a second... A fence charger puts out about 10,000 volts. The object of things is to have all 10,000 volts appear across "the load" (the load is YOU!). You are not really a great conductor of electricity. The voltage will appear mostly across the worst conductors in the circuit. If you make the whole circuit a real good conductor, compaired to you, you will get most of the voltage to apear across your body. Thats what we are trying to do! By The Way - feel free to subsitute a body other than your's into this story if you like.

Now, if the fence circuit has poor connections in it, some of the voltage will be dropped across the bad connections, leaving less for you! This is where a good ground connection comes in!

What is a good connection? Depends on your soil conditions! A minimum of three copper-clad steel rods, each 8 feet long, and 10 or more feet apart are needed to get a connection even in soil that is not too bad. Dirt is not the best conductor, and it is hard to get a good connection to it. (if dirt was a good conductor, the electric company would string wads of mud between the utility poles - just doesn't happen!)

What if you have dry soil? That is harder to get a connection to. Hate to say it, but you need more ground rods. Spread them farther apart, and run the string of rods down hill if possible. Down hill is usually wetter, and you may eventually hit year-round water.

Another thing that can help improvve the connection is to alter the soil conductivity a bit. Before you start pounding the rod in, get out a post hole digger and dig as deep as you can without hospitalizing yourself. Take a large pry-bar and drive it down the bottom of the hole a ways if you can, extending the bottom of the hole with another, smaller diameter hole.

Now drive your ground rod into the hole you have just made. Before you back-fill the whole thing, here is the trick. Take some granular live-stock minerals and mix it with the dirt. About a cup of it for one rod would be an un-scientifically guessed at amount. Now back-fill.

What you have done is added "ions" to the dirt. Ions move more easily than "non-ions", and this is what electricity is all about. You have made your 10 inch diameter hole into a good conductor. A 10 inch diameter conductor contacts a whole lot more soil than the surface of that little 5/8" rod does, improving the connection by LOTS!

How do you drive an 8 foot rod into the ground anyway?

Well, the first time I got up on top of a step ladder and started swinging with a sledge hammer. If you do this, you will probably want a first aid kit handy, and don't forget the number 911, in case you break too many bones in your hand when you hit it with the hammer.

The easiest way, short of paying someone else to do it, is to use a fence post driver. It is a heavy piece of pipe, with a cap on one end, that slides over the top of the rod. There are two handles, one on each side, to hold onto the thing. You lift up on the hammer as high as you can without sliding it off of the ground rod, and then pull it down as hard as you can. It works like a sledge hammer, but since it goes around the rod, at will not slip off and smash your "whatever". You will still have to use a sledge hammer for the last foot, but the rod will hold itself so your fingers will be nowhere near where you are aiming.

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Let's Put In a Ground Rod !

I decided to take some pictures while putting in a ground rod one somewhat wet day. Rainy days are the best time to put in a rod, as the dirt is soft and that makes the work is easier. Besides, what else is there to do on a rainy day?

First thing we hav to do is dig a hole. Go as deep as you can... 2-3 feet.
	Using a fence post driver, pound in the post so that only about 3-4 inches are still above ground.
A sledge hammer is handy for getting the rod in that last foot or so.
	Wrap the ground wire around the rod and attach it with a ground rod clamp. Some electrical tape temporarily holds the wire to the rod prior to attaching the clamp to make it easier to slide things togther. The tape later acts as a strain relief to remove stress from the connection.
This is caked-up iron powder scraped up from around a cut-off saw. If you know someone that has a cutoff saw, or maybe an electric grinding wheel, offer to clean up after them once in a while! Add to the iron powder a little bit of crushed mineral block and mix it up with the first shovel full of dirt as you start to back-fill the hole Do not backfill all the way... stop with about a foot to go.
	Fill the last foot or so with sand. Sand will suck up water when it rains and help keep the hole wetter. Notice the piece or rubber hose slid over the end of the rod. That will protect inocent passerbys, human or otherwise from hurting themselves on the protruding rod.
A little something to further protect the rod from accidental contact with whatever passes by. It also acts as a marker, making it easier to find the rod later after you have forgotten exactly where you burried it.

Your Rod Is Done!

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MORE TO COME, STOP BY AS I GET THIS PAGE ORGANIZED!

things to be added soon:
>how do i actually put a corner brace together?
>an idea for fencing across a brook (still looking for better ones)
>the tension mechanism
>fence tools
>more stuff, if i think of it

If you don't understand anything, want more information, noticed that I spelled something wrong, whatever, e-mail me and I will work on improving whatever I did wrong

Also, if you want to be notified when I add more "Stuff" to this page, e-mail me for that as well, and I will put you on my "FENCE PAGE UPDATED" e-mail list.

Catcha later ~! Rick

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last updated: JANUARY 12, 1999