(800) 853-2651
SHOP NOW

Setting posts

grandpa Love

grandpa Love

Well-known Member
Set 65 4x4 posts yesterday. 99 degrees. 85+% humidity. Auger holes,dirt pack posts....... using the Ford 640 to haul material and an hour in the front tire went flat. Suffered through the day and patched the tube last night. It's still holding air this morning.......maybe I got lucky! Lol.
cvphoto36766.jpg
 
Good digging sure helped. Terrible
dry......auger was pulling powder
out of most holes. Could use some
rain!
 
Me and 2 boys...25+ bottles of water. And 8-10 body armor drinks. I don't even want to think about post hole diggers!!
 
Nice work. I?m here to tell you it was terrible in Bama yesterday, temps hit 103 in south bama, when I went to my granddaughters soccer game last night at 5:45 it was still 102.3 degrees here, I?m still having some issues this morning from yesterday?s heat
 
Years ago I set a bunch of posts but I cheated. I used the Cat 950 and just pushed the posts into the ground. By the way you would not haul that machine on your trailer is around 40,000lbs. My wife would hold the post and I would set the bucket on the top of the post. Then she would get out of the way and I would just push the post down. I did have a couple sort of explode due to hitting rock
 
Ahhh yes, nothing like a good hand pounded post. Use a shale bar and it is so funny when a newbe is helping. When you are done, the hole is almost 20% low. That rammed earth is not going anywhere!. They can't figure where all of the dirt went. In the center of new jersey the soil is that red shale. Most of the time it is not too bad to dig but when it gets good and dry even a tractor mounted digger has trouble. Had to run a garden hose into a couple. Thing is the hard dry soil turns to dust and the water will turn it to mud. Kinda like mixing cement. Fun fun. Down along the lower meadow the posts would float out of the ground in a really wet spring. Those couple of dozen post were driven in and not hand rammed.
 
Your post (pun intended) made me laugh because many years ago my 7 year old son was helping me set a bunch of posts. Used a hand held post hole digger. With a big pile of dirt beside the hole we would insert the post in the hole. which just about filled up the hole. Then replaced the dirt and we'd always need more dirt. He would say: "But dad, we put a big post in that hole. we should have had dirt left over". Pretty funny.
 
We've got clay soil, and I've got so I have a tractor loader of gravel and mix the gravel with the clay as I fill and tamp- addresses both problems, hard to tamp dry clay and you always are short of dirt.
 
In my area if you use concrete the post will rot off in just a few years if you get that many years. In dirt they last 10 plus years if not 30 years
 
OLD,
25+ years ago I paid to have a privacy fence put up. They used concrete.

I put a 4x4 post in the dirt for a bird house. 10 years later the post was rotted off.
 
There was a fence put in on the edge of my drive way and they used treated 6X6 posts and concrete and in less then 3 years all the post had rotted and fell. Concrete it still there but new posts sit in the dirt. Concrete tends to hole water so in turn it causes the post to rot faster
 
WOW. We drove steel posts with the Stan-Hoist loader on the '51 M with M&W live hyd for years. But driving WOOD POSTS? Dad & I built half a mile of hog fence in hog pastures every year. Maybe two wood end posts on each end, then zig-zag the woven wire to tighten it when pushing the steel posts in. I got the tractor driving job till I was about 15, then I got to hold the posts. Company called Shaver made wood post drivers, but nobody around had one back then. I hated taking fence down more that putting it up. We put up quarter mile of fence along the road one summer. Wood post then 2 or 3 steel posts, 48 inch woven wire and one string of barbed wire. Hog fence was 42 in woven wire and no barbed wire. We had a Continental post hole digger mounted on the '39 H or '54 Super H. Had several augers for it, 12 to 24 inch.

We would NOT have built fence on 100+ degree days.
 
In my neck of the woods posts set in Crete will rot off sooner than anything else. How fast it rots depends on the makeup of the post and how it was treated.
 
I built 4 decks for rental properties. All set in concrete. Decks are 19 years and older. Still there. Frame work is solid. Had to replace the newest deck boards only, AC2 free 5/4.

Use what ever you want.
 
Concrete on deck posts and gate
posts. Dirt or gravel mixed with
dirt for rail fences. Easy to fix
when an animal or tractor breaks a
post! Will also give a little
before they break.
 
That is all the deeper you set posts???? I set line post 3-4 foot and corners 4-5 foot.

I drive my field fence posts. My driver has a small 4 inch auger that you drill a pilot hole with and then drive the post into it. Nothing to back fill and still have a straight post.

On large corner posts or ones that have to be an exact distance, I drill holes but back fill with clean 3/4 stone. In dry conditions like you have the side walls are like concrete. That stone will make the post darn near as tight as concrete. I like doing them that way as the posts seem to last longer here.

I have a Shaver HD-12D driver with the pilot hole auger. It was not cheap but I have built miles of fence with it.

Here is a driver like mine. You can see the auger swung out of the way to drive.

cvphoto36836.jpg


Here you can see the auger in use.


cvphoto36837.jpg


Here is some of my fence. Not as good as looking as yours though.


cvphoto36838.jpg


P.S. I would just DIE in your heat and humidity!!!! LOL I am built for the COLD. I will take zero any day over 80-90.
 
Well, the treatment chemicals have changed over the last 25 years. The newer posts do not use copper based treatment anymore. Has nothing to do with concrete.
 
I agree with you Old. The post and rail fence posts my dad and I put in around 1965, many of them are still standing. I replaced some of the front post and rail fence last fall and need to do a few more next week. Just plain old red shale dirt and tamp it really good. I cannot beleve some township engineers believing that wood posts in cement is a good idea. Guarentee they rot off in a few years from trapped water.
 
As you can imagine, owning a grape vineyard, with line posts every twenty feet and rows on eight foot centers, I have some experience with posts and wires. Seems like 250-275 posts per acre is about right.

We have some that date back to before my Grandparents bought this farm in 1946, some I installed new in 1984. I am replacing most frequently the ones installed in 1984- 3.5 inch treated round pine posts set on a clay hill. They are rotting off like they were set in concrete, which they kinda were. Often, I simply cannot pull the stump of a broken post for two or three months in the summer without rain. We used a sprayer to haul water the autumn we drilled the original holes.

Part of the vineyard has steel posts in the line, ranging from 6 foot long to 8 foot long, the short ones will pull up when that area is wet in the spring- not all the way out, but enough to lean over.

Right now I am traveling each row, checking for broken wires and posts, replacing and repairing prior to harvest. I hope to get through them all in the next couple of weeks, and bale hay, and our refueling outage starts next week, so 72 hour weeks at work (nights). And digging out the darn giant thistles that evaded all weed sprays, too. And, I probably should put the rest of the equipment away...
 
AC2. No arsenic
Both concrete post and bird house post were installed at the same time.

The post in just dirt was rotted.

Treated lumber today isn't designed for ground contact. So concete keeps away from the dirt.

Last winter I installed parts of shingles on tenants wood deck to make it less slick. That was a big mistake. Deck lumber stayed wet. I had to replace the treated deck lumber.
 
I take care of 50 plus miles of fence here, still many hundreds of them solid today that were installed 90 plus years ago,, those are all cedar tree posts,, NOT factory made ones but made from a tree, different soils in different areas so it has nothing to do with being treated or not at least here,, I seldom use concrete here for posts,, unless I am setting a big sign that I need the ballast for to hold the post in the ground,, never use gravel just hand tamp them in with dirt, been doing it that way since the 60's myself, I replace bad ones a few a year with all steel posts today other than corner and brace posts funny you say treated ones are not made for ground contact I do some custom fencing and install thousands of them a year,, not a single one in a fence ever gets concreted in,, that is fine on a handful of posts for a deck or shed,, but not practical at all for doing miles of fence at a time,,
 
That is pretty funny as we always had a pile of dirt around the post. Never a lack of dirt. And every utility pole and they are replacing quite a few have a big pile at base of every post. And I know there are power line posts still in use set in 1946 when the power first came when I was 3 years old.
 
We would always tamp the daylights out of the fill dirt with either a shovel handle or a big old crow bar made out of a driveshaft.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

J
This old man is BEAT tonight!!!! Fun times in the heat!!!
Replies
13
Views
2K
Andy Martin
A
J
JD 6300 with 19,000 hrs. and it story
2
Replies
22
Views
2K
JD Seller
J
J
JD 6300 with 19,000 hrs. and it's story!!!! Long
Replies
11
Views
1K
JD Seller
J
J
Ever build fence on Dec. 26th????
Replies
16
Views
3K
wisbaker
W
J
Got all Horsed out yesterday!!! Long post warning LOL
2
Replies
36
Views
5K
Nancy Howell
N
Tractor Parts Tractor Manuals

We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today.

Copyright © 1997-2024 Yesterday's Tractor Co.

All Rights Reserved. Reproduction of any part of this website, including design and content, without written permission is strictly prohibited. Trade Marks and Trade Names contained and used in this Website are those of others, and are used in this Website in a descriptive sense to refer to the products of others. Use of this Web site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy TRADEMARK DISCLAIMER: Tradenames and Trademarks referred to within Yesterday's Tractor Co. products and within the Yesterday's Tractor Co. websites are the property of their respective trademark holders. None of these trademark holders are affiliated with Yesterday's Tractor Co., our products, or our website nor are we sponsored by them. John Deere and its logos are the registered trademarks of the John Deere Corporation. Agco, Agco Allis, White, Massey Ferguson and their logos are the registered trademarks of AGCO Corporation. Case, Case-IH, Farmall, International Harvester, New Holland and their logos are registered trademarks of CNH Global N.V.

Yesterday's Tractors - Antique Tractor Headquarters
Website Accessibility Policy

Back
Top