A treatise on Electric Fencing

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Hi, I'm thinking about putting an electric wire perimeter around my yard, and trying to decide between plug-in, battery or solar powered. Plug in seemed appealing at first, but then I was reading about how to install, and came across a problem that I have not seen addressed yet in all my reading.

It said you had to install a grounding rod 6' deep in the ground, within 20' of the charger. Ok, sounds reasonable. Then it said you have to make sure the grounding rod is MORE than 50' away from any underground telephone or water lines. Well, on the back of my house, the electric and telephone come in from the west, the line from the well is on the east, and my electric outlet is in the middle. There's no where that is 50' away from those lines that is still within 20' of the outlet. Does this mean I can't use that outlet for the fence charger? Am I forced to go with battery or solar? I don't really want to run an extension cord way out from the house 50' past the well. Or do people just ignore those recommended distances when they place their grounding rod?
 
That's interesting directions. I wonder if they ever re-read the directions they make? gig.gif

DH just walked in so I asked him. He says he never worries about that.:confused: He also says our ground rods are a foot down...we've been wet here for 7 years.

Not sure if that's good advice or not...so take that with a grain of salt. We do have miles of electric fencing for the cattle and sheep we've had for years. And my electric poultry fencing will apparently be illegal by those directions because the water line will go under two sides of my fencing....whenever we get it up. I bought a plug in fencer for the job. Although it's been commandeered by DH because one of his died. But I'll replace that fencer with another plug in one...when it's on sale again.;)
 
Wickedchicken6 said:
That's interesting directions. I wonder if they ever re-read the directions they make? View attachment 1022768

DH just walked in so I asked him. He says he never worries about that.:confused: He also says our ground rods are a foot down...we've been wet here for 7 years.

Not sure if that's good advice or not...so take that with a grain of salt. We do have miles of electric fencing for the cattle and sheep we've had for years. And my electric poultry fencing will apparently be illegal by those directions because the water line will go under two sides of my fencing....whenever we get it up. I bought a plug in fencer for the job. Although it's been commandeered by DH because one of his died. But I'll replace that fencer with another plug in one...when it's on sale again.;)
Click to expand...
Oh, well it's not like those instructions were legal code. They talked about this was to avoid interference. Saying that if you hear a pulsing sound while you were on your phone, or felt static shocks at your faucets, then it would mean your grounding rod was too close to either the phone lines or the water lines. It didn't say the whole fence couldn't be near those.

I have read parts of this thread in the past. Not sure how far I got, so today I started over reading the first page. From what I learned today, it seems to me that 6' of grounding rod is overkill. (Hence your DH going with 1 foot.) If I can ground it at any point and not worry about being within 20' of the charger, then I don't think I will have a problem.

But I learned something else in the first post. GFCI outlets won't work. So I may be forced to go the battery route after all.
 
Ohhhh...we haven't run into the GFCI outlet issue. That's a good thing to know. This farm is old and where the fencers are plugged in, it's regular outlets.

I think if you're in a dry area, the 6' is needed. We're far too wet for comfort here.

The main water line for this house and the one for our house goes right past the chicken coop where we'll be plugging ours in. That would suck to have interference. And that's unfortunate if you won't be able to use a plug in fencer if that's what you were planning. :(
 
Well now I've finished page 2 of this thread, and they are saying the GFCI getting tripped is only a potential problem, not a definite one. Maybe I need to keep reading...

I do love how informative @HowardE s posts are.
 
Howard E said:
Thank you Ms. Diva. I can't get over it......62,000 posts and still going. Wow.
Click to expand...

This quote is from page 3, I think it's post #31.

I want to know what thread he is referring to that has 62,000 posts. It sounded like they were talking about this thread, but this one seems to only have 8 pages. Was there a previous incarnation of this thread that I missed?
 
Finnie:

Reference to posts was to Ms. Diva, who at the time had about 62,000 BYC forum posts to her credit. I checked and it is now over 75,000. That is a lot of posting! (but to all sections of the forum).

There is a method to test the GFI outlet to see if it trips. Simply ground out your fence by laying a piece of metal on the wire, and let it connect to the ground below. That duplicates what happens if an animal touches the fence. That will complete the circuit and if the GFI then trips, you have a problem. If not, all is well. The deal is if the GFI trips if an animal (or plant) touches it, then all AC power is lost and your fence goes cold (is no longer shocking). A cold electric fence is not much of a deterrent.

BTW, something similar is also used to test if you have enough ground rod. Using the same kind of metal rod, short out the fence some distance from your fencer, then go back to the fencer with your volt meter tester. Connect it to the ground (soil), then to the ground wire side of your fencer. If your connection to the ground is not sufficient, not all the voltage in the fence is going through ground rods. So any surplus potential voltage will show up at the test location as voltage on your tester.

As for keeping away from water lines, I'd have to have someone explain to me how that is supposed to work, but it seems far fetched to me. More like a theoretical possibility more than anything to seriously be worried about.
 
Howard E said:
Reference to posts was to Ms. Diva, who at the time had about 62,000 BYC forum posts to her credit. I checked and it is now over 75,000. That is a lot of posting! (but to all sections of the forum).
Click to expand...
WOW! That's a LOT of posts!

Thank you for the helpful info on testing the GFCIs and the grounding post. That will come in handy.
 

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