Hi, In many areas the various utility companies have a service which will come to your home and mark all underground utilities such as electric, gas, cable and phone. It does not cost and, in some areas, if you do *NOT* ask for this service and hit a utility you will pay and pay and pay.
I have used welded wire many times and it works just fine. Just be sure that the grid is small enough to keep your smaller pets inside. To insure that you have a nice square line from your home don't forget and the formula A square + B square = C square. (I have no idea where the square sign is) That is leg A might be 3 feet, leg B might be 4 feet and the distance between A and B will be 5 feet. You can double these distances and the formula will still be absolutely correct. (6 feet, 8 feet and 10 feet - 36+64=100) It sure is handier than trying to get a line of sight (particularly when you have no sight - LOL) Cy, The Anasazi From: blindhandyman@yahoogroups.com [mailto:blindhandy...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Dale Leavens Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2010 6:06 PM To: blindhandyman@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [BlindHandyMan] advice putting up a fence I don't think I know what welded wire is, I do have some experience with chain link though. If you are sinking your posts more than about a foot you would be well advised to have the utilities checked. Usually the gas, water and electricity, phone and cable will make a pretty straight line from the street or lane to the meters or house locations but you cannot be certain. When I lived in Chatham the telephone people came with one of those earth cutting chainsaw like devices and cut a line along the side of my house and across the back yard diagonally to supply a neighbour who's house backed onto one corner of my property. I never would have guessed there would have been a line there, I don't know how deep it went. Up here they don't charge to mark out the utilities, they spray paint to show where the utilities lay. My fence is a 6 foot one but the posts aren't a lot taller. I bored 4 foot holes and filled them with cement and embedded the posts into them. It is about 18 years and the fence stands straight still. At the same time my neighbour had one installed, they dug the holes with a power auger, set in wood 4 by 4 posts. It has been leaning for several years now and was pulled down this spring. We have to worry about frost getting down and shifting things up here though. A lot of people now are driving those stakes into the ground with the steel frames to grab wood posts and they work well enough but they do move. One neighbour behind me had a couple of sections of his pushed down by a drunk one night a couple of years ago the stakes broke off or bent but they were fairly easily replaced and the fence again erected. I don't know of any really good way of sinking steel posts reliably into the ground and keeping them even height without mounting them into something like cement. you would need to get them pretty deep I would think if they are to remain secure. What I did was to drive stakes into the ground at the corners then loop a good strong string, masonry string is excellent for the purpose around the posts so that there are two parallel strings between which I could mark and dig my holes. This also allowed me to determine the height since the ground isn't nice and level but you probably want the top of the fence to be level for appearance. You can then decide on height and I marked each steel post with tape at the desired height so I would know exactly how deep to sink them. Hope this gives you some useful ideas. Dale Leavens. ----- Original Message ----- From: Kevin Doucet To: blindhandyman@yahoogroups.com <mailto:blindhandyman%40yahoogroups.com> Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2010 4:25 PM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] advice putting up a fence Hi group, I am looking in to getting a dog. This dog will be for in doors but I want a fenced area for the pet to run and for us to play out in the air. I have an area walled up on two sides, one side the house brick wall and the other side a wood wall of a room addition. I am thinking about having the gate on the wooden wall running along the same plane as the wall, then running the fence at a ninety degree angle to the gate, perpendicular to the brick wall and joining an end fence running perpendicular to the wood wall of the room addition and boxing off the end joining the brick wall to the other ninety degree fence. This will give about a 25 by 50 foot area. As this will not be a big dog, not more than about 30 LBS. this should be enough area, don't you agree? I looked at some mettle fencing, I think it was called welded wire, which looks like it would do the job nicely. Also looked at some mettle fence posts and some wire clamps to attach the fence to the posts. I also have an idea of what to get for the gate and it's fasteners. Now, my concerns are what is involved in putting up the fence? Do I need to have the ground checked by some one to see about water or electrical lines I may puncture with the posts? What tools will I need and what methods do I need to familiarize my self with before starting this project? Thanks for any help you can give. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
