Ministry of De-fence

Apart from a coat of stain I thought we were well and truly finished with the fence. As some may remember we spent a good amount of time and effort last summer replacing the rotting panels of crap that was laughingly called a fence.

This past winter good old Mother Nature (the bitch) decided to unleash a few rather miserable windy days on us. By miserable and windy of course I mean Wizard of Oz + witch + little girl from Kansas kind of weather. The replacement fence panels being much taller than the originals had a lot of pressure put on them as did the posts. Far more than the original post spikes were intended for. As a result several of the posts on the north side of the garden either broke off inside their concrete collars or the spikes they are attached to in the ground have loosened. What we've ended up with is a fence that can do a better Mexican wave than Wembley.

We had several possible solutions to fixing this, the worst one being rip the whole thing down and reposition new and longer posts in fresh concrete filled holes. £££ ouch!  In the end we decided to strengthen the existing posts by digging down around the spikes, bolting a second post to the first one for strength, and concreting them both in. This has the advantage of making the fence a lot stronger than just the single post in a new spike.

But first I must digress. Up until now the work in the Dung Heap has been just the 2 of us. SWMBO and myself. All that changed on Sunday with the arrival of my son (RC) for a couple of months. We now have our very own DIY assistant. This means we will be working to a schedule for the first time with a goal of completing, yes completing (stop laughing) all of the landscaping in the back garden, rebuilding the front garden wall, finishing off the last niggling bits of the shed, and building a greenhouse.  If time permits we'll also be making a start on the bathroom conversion.

First RC dug a hole reaching to the bottom of the post spike. For the most part this was pretty easy to do.

Then we bolted on a second post giving a 150mm thick brace against the wind.

The hole was then filled with Postcrete. What wonderful stuff that is. Just fill the hole partially with water, dump in the postcrete, tamp it down a bit, and go for a coffee break. 20 mins later its hard enough to remove any bracing.

As usual in the Dung Heap nothing ever goes exactly to plan. The first few holes were dead simple. A few rocks and a brick to remove but nothing special. That is until we came to the last hole.

This was the only post that wasn't held in with a spike. It was embedded in concrete. Trouble is the post wasn't firmly stuck. It wobbled about like a loose tooth.

So, I thought we'll just dig down where we can and try to crack the concrete. Maybe we'll get lucky and be able to get the second post in there. Failing that we could drive a wedge down into the gap between the existing post and the concrete.  No such luck. The concrete itself is pretty crappy and its not surprising the post wiggled loose. A couple of whacks with a sledge hammer and chunks of it started breaking off. Hmmm, maybe we can get a second post in there. RC started digging, hammering, and chiseling away for the next hour and a half. By the time I got back he had unearthed half a Roman remain. Well about a dozen bricks and tiles that had been buried right where the post needs to go.

The worst bit was this big b*stard. Its a blob of around half a dozen bricks that have been welded together by concrete.

Thankfully this has a happy ending. Enough brick and concrete was pulled out of the hole to be able to splice in the second post and to re-concrete both posts in solid. Great job RC!