How to Choose Your Garden Fence: Erecting Fence Posts

If you are looking to have that perfect garden fence post, here is something that you should know – your fence needs to be strong enough to stay put all through the year. A good way to do this is to have 1/3 of the post under the ground to offer it the stability it needs. So, for a 5 foot fence post, you would actually need to buy a 8 foot post.

The type of garden fence you need depends on what you’re trying to achieve. The two most popular ones are wooden and concrete options and you need a different approach for each of them.

Erecting Fence Posts

Here are all the things that you need to look at when choosing your garden fence.

  1. Know where to put the fence posts

Decide where the first and last post would be, and mark it in a line so that you can install the posts perfectly.

  1. Fill it up properly

Use a fence post digger to dig the hole. Ensure that the hole does not get too wide and you can push back the soil as needed to make the post steady. Also, do not forget to use a spirit level to ensure that the garden fence is level – and you might just want to have someone helping you out with this. Remember to replace the soil only a little amount at a time.

  1. You can use metal spikes

Metal spikes can help make setting up the fences a lot easier. You would just need to ensure that you have bought the right size and length of metal spike, which you can do by checking the length and size of your fence post.

  1. Use a detector

This will help you to ensure that there are no pipes underneath the ground that can break when you’re setting up the fence posts.

  1. Choose different fence posts if you have concrete

If you are looking to set up fence posts on concrete, your requirements will be different. For one, posts set up in concrete are very difficult to remove later on. However, it does offer better protection than wooden fence posts so you might want to try it.

You can buy in ready mix concretes to help make installation easier, or just use sand, gravel and concrete together when setting up the posts.

The process here remains the same, and you would first need to dig out a hole. Then, you would need to erect the fence one panel at a time. You would also have to use a spirit level here too, to ensure that the fences are levelled properly. You need to smooth the concrete surface to ensure that the rainwater slopes away and doesn’t accumulate.

Conclusion

Finally, you need to learn to protect the fence posts. This can be done by a wooden protection product if you have wooden fences that can protect it from sun and rain. This offers superior and long lasting protection and you wouldn’t have to worry for years. Or you can paint in the concrete fences to ensure that they do not rust as easily.

See the full range of Owatrol Products available from Promain here

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