Tag: fence installation

The Fence – Part 5 of ??

Too Much Tension

After the fifth insulator snapped I emailed Monica at Bluebird Fencing (if you are brand new to fencing I would really encourage you to find a local, independent, fence company to work with; yes we could have gotten things cheaper elsewhere, but Monica has been so helpful, quick to answer, and always kind, I don’t think we could have done this without her help – totally worth the slightly higher cost). I emailed Monica and explained what we were experiencing, and she hadn’t heard of any other customers having the issues we were having. She did say that the insulators are designed to snap if they are under too much pressure, the idea being if your horse gets caught up in the fence and you had to choose between an insulator snapping or their leg you would always choose the insulator. But because of that the insulators don’t do well if they are bowed even a little bit. The moment I read that I flashed back to an image of using the socket wrench to get those little nuts on as tight as we absolutely could – oops. She also mentioned that you only wanted enough tension on the ElectroBraid to keep it from sagging, but no more than that – big oops. In my defense the video we watched explicitly said to pull on the ratcheting part of the tensioner system until you couldn’t get any more slack out. I am not an unusually strong person, I am probably slightly below average, so clearly it wasn’t my inferior strength that did it. That video lied to me!

With that I went back out and loosed every corner roller insulator (which worked well for most of them, though a few refused to move – so we’ll just have to hope for the best on those) and went back through and loosened all the EectroBraid lines. I ran into issues on two of the lines though because we had cut off the line to use on the next run and there wasn’t enough on the ends to slacken it so there are a few interesting splices; but in the end I got everything loosened up and we haven’t had any issues since then. Yay!  I do have some tips for how to tell if you have over tensioned your ElectroBraid.

How to tell if you have over-tensioned your ElectroBraid fence:

  • You can feel the ElectroBraid vibrate when you touch it.
  • If you are wearing a hat and the hat touches the ElectroBraid you can hear it.
  • The tensioner kit won’t release (as soon as I took some of the tension out of the lines the tensioner kit release tab worked like it was supposed to – no more safety release knots needed).
  • The ElectroBraid that is looped around the end posts cannot be shifted up or down at all.

So here is the fence with the ElectroBraid up; it only took a month.

If you are looking at those pictures and wondering if the distance between the top two lines is a little wider than the others, you would be correct. If you are wondering if that is driving me ever so slightly crazy, you would also be correct. If you are wondering why I wouldn’t fix it– think back to the fence update regarding the corner posts and how we decided that to speed things up we would stop being so picky about the location of the diagonal braces. Well, turns out if you aren’t so picky you wind up taking up a lot of the potential spots for the corner insulators. The directions said to have one of the diagonal braces at the 8th hole and then put the other one either above or below it. We got pretty flexible with that and some were above, some were below, some where way above, and some were way below. But that meant the fence line had to be above the highest one or below the lowest one and the least awful choice was to go below the lowest one. For a brief moment I considering redoing the corner posts that were too low, but it was about half of them and that was not going to happen. Next time we’ll make sure all the braces are at the 7th and 8th holes so that I can have all the lines spaced evenly. Our experiences are definitely cautionary tales, not instructional guides.

Now to just find those gates!

The Fence – Part 4 of ??

Under Tension

While the search for gates continued, we started installing the ElectroBraid; running from one side of one gate to one side of the other gate.

Before we get in to details, I want to remind everyone that these are more cautionary tales than instructional guides and this post in particular should not be viewed as a “how-to” but as a “how-not.” For those of you who have installed this kind of fence this may be like watching a small, not very serious, train wreck unfold.

Step One – Install the Corner Insulators

The corner insulators have a roller allowing the ElectroBraid to freely change direction and we needed to put them on all the corner posts and end posts. You may be asking yourself – “If the rollers are to change direction why are you putting them on the end posts?” That is an excellent question that I should have asked myself. As with everything else this turned out to be harder than expected. Though the insulators are pre-drilled, it is a pilot hole and isn’t threaded, so getting the bolt through requires some pressure. The back of the insulators are also flat and the posts are round, so trying to hold a flat surface against a rounded surface while putting pressure on a long bolt wasn’t easy. Particularly not with my still not fully functioning wrist. I was leery about using anything motorized since we were working with plastic and on unstable surfaces and I am accident prone.  After doing the first three posts the hard way I decided to pre-screw the bolts into the insulators in the house on a nice flat surface. That way I felt comfortable using our impact driver and it went much faster. That part worked as planned. The issue is that the holes in the posts weren’t drilled nice and straight through the center of the posts, they were almost all off just a little bit. Sometimes this didn’t seem to matter and the bolts slid right through on the first try. And sometimes I spent 45 minutes (forty-five minutes!) just getting one stupid insulator in. I put each bolt through individually to make sure that it would work, yes worked fine, but when they both had to go in – NO. At one point I even took the insulator all the way out and put it in from the other direction just to see if I had lost my mind and the two bolts just popped right in!! Then I put it back on the side it had to be on and – NO. Had there been a table available to flip at that point I would have. We did get them all it but it wasn’t the quick afternoon project I thought it would be. I was also really worried about the fact that these insulators, which seem to be a critical aspect of the fence system, are ultimately held on by two tiny little nuts.

So I really tightened them; breaking out the socket wrench! Okay maybe it was also an excuse to use the socket wrench, which I enjoy using way more than is normal. Nate helped with some of this, but at one point tightened that little nut so much he broke off the end of the bolt… oops. So then I took over that part – though at one point I also tightened to the point of hearing a little crack…. oops again.

Step Two – Install the First Line of ElectroBraid

Run one line of ElectroBraid through all the corners and then use that to locate the inline posts so they are actually in-line and you don’t look like you put the fence up while drunk. This is a legitimate concern; I had put up some marker posts for the farmer so he would know where not to plant this year and despite several attempts I could never get them even remotely straight. This way worked much better! To be extra sure we had them straight we decided to run both the top line and the bottom line and to tension both lines. Particularly because on our two very long runs we couldn’t get the bottom line up and off the ground even with all our by-hand pulling. I ran the top line of ElectroBraid through all the corner insulators and connected it to one of the gate posts with one split-bolt connector as directed. Then I went to the corner before the first long run, put on the tensioner kit which was much harder than the video showed, pulled it, and managed to snap something; luckily not in my body! I went to look, and my single split-bolt connector was no where to be seen. Try, try again. I put the ElectroBraid back on; I used two split-bolt connectors this time and I tightened the ever living daylights out of them. I went back to the corner, reset the tensioner, pulled, and it worked! On to the next corner. Because we have such long runs we had to use two tensioners. You put a tensioner on one corner and pull out as much of the slack as you can (which is what the video tells you to do), then put the second tensioner on another corner, again pull out as much slack as you can, then go back and get the first tensioner off that first corner and move it down to the next corner, repeat until you’ve gotten all the slack out of the line. The problem was we couldn’t get the tensioners to release. There is this little release tab that is supposed to let go and of course it wouldn’t. Most of the time I would just wiggle the hook part on the other end enough to get it to slip off but a few times we had to use the butt of a kitchen knife to push the tab to release it but each time we did that it felt like it was going to snap off. And then it did. Of course. The next day we purchased another tensioner, and I had the genius idea of using a quick release knot (the kind you use to tie a horse so you can release it quickly in an emergency even if it is under a lot of pressure) on the other end of the tensioner so we could use that to get it off. That worked much better; most of the time.

Side note – this is a good reminder that the basic quick release knot isn’t actually the best one to use because sometimes if things pull just right it won’t release. I really need to re-learn the better version to use with horses. Back to our tale of mishap.

I also realized that the metal clamp part of the tensioner system goes on much easier if the plastic ratchet part isn’t already hanging on the one end. I have no idea why this makes a difference, but it did. Now we had the top and bottom lines up and tensioned. If you touched it you could feel it vibrate from the tension and if our hat brims touched the fence line you could hear it hum.

Step 3 – Install the Inline Posts

We had gotten what we thought was a rod to use to put in pilot holes in the ground for the inline posts. It was three feet long, metal, pointed on one end with a handle on the other. We would get that positioned, Nate would mallet it in, then we’d pull it out and put in the 8-foot inline post and then pound that in. On the very first try Nate managed to break our new mallet. Of course. This is why buying the absolute cheapest option doesn’t always save you money. Luckily I had also bought a more expensive mallet and hadn’t returned it yet so the more expensive one it was! We got through about half the posts before our metal pilot hole thing hit a rock and went from being a T to a J. Of course. Another run to the store – except they didn’t have any more. So I started looking online to see if I could find one and it turns out they are not pilot hole tester things, they are their own grounding rods to use with temporary systems. Oops. So now what? Driving 8-foot-tall posts into the ground straight was close to impossible before, how are we going to do it now? Bluebird fencing mentioned that some clients have used a giant drill bit to drill a pilot hole into the ground to get them started so I went searching for that. Best I could find was 18” long. Not ideal, but better than nothing. This is also when I re-discovered my complete inability to drill straight. You could offer me $1,000,000,000 and all I had to do was drill one hole straight in the ground and I could not do it. The first one I tried I think I drilled 20 holes trying to get it in straight; truly ridiculous. I did eventually get better. The trick was to keep drilling into the same spot, somehow all my mistakes slowly fixed each other until I was close enough to straight. You would also think that if every time I was too far up and to the right I could correct for that but no; I was almost always too far up and to the right, except for the two times I was too far down and to the left. Regardless I got them in and straight enough to be acceptable.

Step 4 – Install the Insulators on the Inline Posts

We used quick clip insulators for the inline posts. You slip them on the post, twist them to get the ElectroBraid in, and then screw them in place with a tiny screw in the back. One thing we actually did right was to measure out where all the insulators were on the corner posts and then pre-marked all the inline posts in the garage before installing them. The top and bottom lines were already up and tensioned so getting them into the insulators was much harder than the directions indicated. Nate did discover the hack of putting the insulator on the top line of ElectroBraid first, and then putting the insulator on the inline post, which was much easier, but that wasn’t an option for the bottom line.

Step 5 – Install the Remaining Lines of ElectroBraid

We were in the middle of putting up the middle two lines of ElectroBraid when this happened:

That top line is NOT supposed to cut across like that. No big deal I thought, that was the corner post where I had heard the crack so I had probably cracked that corner insulator and that is why it broke. We released the tension, put on a new corner insulator, and re-tensioned that line and then continued on. The two middle lines went better. Putting them through the insulators before tensioning it made it go much faster and we got better at positioning the quick-release knots of the tensioners so that they would, in-fact, quick-release.

With that we had the wire up and run for about 2/3 of our fence line. YAY!!!

I then started counting out the insulators for the rest of the fence so I could pre-screw the bolts in and realized that we were short. That can’t be right! I counted everything when we went through the corner post debacle. It was at this point that I realized you aren’t supposed to use the CORNER rolling insulators on an END post. You are just supposed to loop the ElectroBraid around the end post. Of course. The distance to travel around the outside of the post is just a bit longer than going through the insulator and the bottom line was already so tight there wasn’t any slack to work with so I had to go and loosen it at the other end and discovered that we had over tightened the split-bolt connectors and the ElectroBraid was starting to fray. Of course. So now we have to loosen all the connections just a little bit. Back to the bottom line – we had to put everything into tightening it to get it around the end post but we did it! And then another insulator snapped and there went that bottom line. Of course. We loosened the other end a little more and tried again and then it stayed.

Until two days later when not one, not two, but three of the lines broke their corner insulators.

Of. (expletive of your choice). Course.

Fence – Part 2 of ??

There is a general outline that appears to be true about installing any type of tension-based fence.

  1. Decide where the fence is going to go, in particular the location of all the corner, end-posts, and gates.
  2. Install the corners, end-posts, and gate posts.
  3. Put up a line or two of your fencing material and put a minimum amount of tension in it.
  4. Use your line of fencing material to determine where the in-line posts need to go and put them in.
  5. Put up the rest of the fencing material and tension it.
  6. Electrify it.

We finished step one and now need to do step two – install the corners, end-posts, and gate posts.

The directions that came with the fence system remind me of the directions that are in some of the not-so-great textbooks I’ve had to teach out of. They are written by people who know exactly what they are doing to other people who already know exactly what they are doing. They leave the details out, use technical vocabulary that is not defined, have limited visuals, and are super dense. I read and reread and reread the directions referencing and re-referencing the two diagrams they had and still felt like I had no clue how to do this, so I went searching for a video online. There has to be a video online somewhere– right?!  Apparently the answer is: sort-of.

There are a few other companies around the country that sell the Geotek Common Sense Fence and Mule System and one of them is Cashmans in Ohio. Before we purchased the fence I did search around to see if I could get a better price and though some of these places were cheaper, they were all farther away and because these components require freight shipping the additional shipping costs always offset any potential savings. If you are near Ohio Cashmans may be a good choice for you, but they were not for us. I say this because the ONLY video I could find about installing our fence system was part of a longer YouTube video Cashmans’s put out that contains what appears to be various parts of some 1990’s era, VHS quality, video.

I watched the whole video (which was over an hour) and then made Nate re-watch the pertinent parts with me before we went out to install our first corner. The video makes it appear VERY easy.

 

LIES! Or perhaps more accurately these are condition dependent truths and we do not have the required conditions and they skip over ALL the details.

Places where the video did not match our reality or left out some major details:

  • The four-handled hand-tool they use to install the augers that we received was not welded correctly so we could not get the fourth handle in it and were working with a three-handled hand-tool which meant instead of handing it off to each other we each had to take a side and spin around in a circle. If you are picturing something like the dizzy bat game you are not far off. We were a bit more graceful, but not by much.
  • They were clearly working in loamy soil and not the heavy clay we’re dealing with. Getting each of those augers in took forever and we often had to make use of the tip from the shelter anchors and water the hole, which of course meant delays as we let the water soak in.
  • If you want your post to be straight then the anchor needs to go in straight which is easier said than done when two people with different strength stats are trying to screw it in.
  • The diagonal brace needs to line up in just the right spot on the vertical post, which they don’t mention at all. That turned out to be one of our biggest challenges and led to one of our bigger arguments throughout this process. We were trying to get the angle right and we would get it in, put the diagonal brace on, and be way too high or way too low. Then we’d take it off, unscrew the auger, re-screw the auger and invariably over-correct. After what felt like the five millionth time of overcorrecting Nate was getting pretty frustrated and angry and in an effort to help I said “because the brace is so long a small change in angle at this end results in a large change at the other end” in what I felt was a calm and reasonable tone of voice – though apparently calm came off as condescending and Nate thought I was calling him an idiot. We got over that eventually and now “a small change on this end will result in a large change on the other end” is a recurring joke whenever the process gets frustrating and one of us is getting mad.
  • Securing the diagonal brace to the vertical brace is MUCH harder than they show. Even once you have the diagonal brace in the right spot the company either changed the brace clamps or switched to shorter bolts because we could not get the bolt through the brace clamp enough to fit the washer and the nut on without having to clamp the brace itself. Of course our vice grip was too wide and trying to fit it on the brace and leave room for the washer and space to turn the nut was an extreme challenge. There was a LOT of swearing for that very first corner and then another trip to LeVahn Brothers hardware (I truly love them!) to get a needle nose vice grip which worked much better.
  • Needing to have the vertical post level-ish, at the right height, and with the pre-drilled holes aimed the correct direction was also not mentioned at all and was also a challenge. Particularly because for almost every corner post the holes were not drilled in straight through the post but slightly off to one side or in some cases not straight down the length of the post. It wasn’t till an argument at the second corner that we realized this. Nate was on one side insisting it was aimed correctly and I was on the other side insisting he had lost his mind because they were not even remotely aimed correctly only to realize we were both correct because the holes don’t go through straight.
  • The video shows them doing the four-foot corners which don’t require a horizontal brace but the five-foot corners we have require a horizontal brace. Getting that to line up correctly with everything is also a challenge.
  • The insulators do not go in that easy! It probably has to do with the holes not being drilled straight through the posts so the angles are off just enough to make the bolts catch. In one case it took me over 45 minutes to put in a single insulator! 

But other than that – simple and easy. And they really aren’t going anywhere. It took us an entire day just to get that first corner in, after which Nate declared we’re just buying new fence once we get the barn built and we’re never moving this one.

 

Now we just need to do 18 more!