Fencing lessons

This is the third time in my life that I've had to build/rebuild a fence. Its not a lot of fun but I have to say that so far this has been the easiest.

Canadian fence building:

1: calculate the amount of wood used to build your house, double it, order from Home Depot, etc. Curse when they drop it all off at the front of the house and you have to move it all by hand around back.

2: order the same amount of concrete that was used in the construction of the Calgary Tower. Repeat the manual moving of the concrete from front to back.

3: rent an oil rig to drill the post holes, or get a portable auger and a lot of mates to help.

4: place 12' pole in 4' hole fill with several bags of concrete.

5: order more concrete as you vastly underestimated.

6: stop for a beer.

7: repeat 4,5,6 until all posts are in.

8: spend hours levelling and banging in 2x4s to make the fence frames.

9: stop for a beer.

10: spend more hours hammering in each fence board.

11: order 300 litres of Thompson's Waterseal.

12: spend the next 3 weekends painting the bloody fence.

Your new fence will now outlast the rest of humanity and may even withstand a nuclear attack.


English fence building:

1: choose length, height, panel style and order from local business.

2: watch the poor delivery guy unload the lot in the p*ssing rain exactly where you need it.

3: bang in the post spikes.

4: hammer posts into the spike brackets and tighten bolts.

5: put pre-fab panel in place and attach with brackets. No nails.

6: repeat for each panel.

7: 45' of fence done in 3 hours. Take the rest of the afternoon off.

The panels are pre-treated so no need to paint for the first year to 18 months.


Ok ok, maybe a slight stretching of the truth but replacing the worst part of the Dung Heap's fence was a snap.


This shows just how level and stable the old fence was. In the end it only took the removal of about 5 or 6 screws to be able to pull the whole thing down by hand.


Rather than rip up all the existing post spikes I was able to reuse them. They weren't all perfectly aligned but close enough.


Voila, not bad for a couple of hours work. All that remains on that side is to lop off the excess post length. The other side is going to be a bit more effort as there aren't any post spikes and the existing posts are just loose in holes. Looks like I'm going to be banging in some spikes after all.