Fencing Issue

[mowin]

The potential issue i see is going to be grounding your hot wire. Grounding rods should be 8' in the ground, and you should have 2 of 'em.

 

[Alaskan]

You can connect the the grounding rod for your house...

 

[Trisseh]

If you’re running electric and you have rocky and or dry conditions, I would say you’d be much better off using a positive/negative system. You can (and should) still sink at least one ground rod, but with a pos/neg system, the animal touches both a “hot” (pos) and “cold” (neg) wire and completes the circuit without it having to travel from the hot wire, through the animal, into the ground, over to the ground connection, to give a shock. Dogs can squeeze through pretty tight wires and have a fur coat that protects them from weak shocks, so the harder it zaps the better. My husky x can waltz right through the hot wire I have set up for the cows because she barely brushes it with her fur.
I also like to bait my hot wire with a bit of bacon grease etc for the foxes and coyotes to take a bite out of, too.
I’ve used a chicken wire/fence wire apron as my negative wire too, so when the animal is standing on it, and touches the hot wire, they get an excellent zap.

positive/negative fences are often used for bee hives to keep bears away. Lots of info out there on setting them up.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Well it's your call on what material will be used, just keep in mind that it will degrade.

I know, nothing lasts forever - not even diamonds. And i will build the fence on my property so that there is enough room to walk along outside and do regular checks and maintenance.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

The potential issue i see is going to be grounding your hot wire. Grounding rods should be 8' in the ground, and you should have 2 of 'em.

Grounding is the least of my concerns: I have wet acidic loamy soil which is ideal to carry electrical charges. I did soil resistivity measurements at several spots and nowhere was it more than 60 Ω/m. I begin to understand why the fruit trees on my land are doing so poor…
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_resistivity

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

You can connect the the grounding rod for your house...

My house has a grounding-rod? - Just kidding! The grounding rod for my house is also called »main water pipe«. The house is 56 years old and definitely not up to any code anymore.

 

[Trisseh]

Grounding is the least of my concerns: I have wet acidic loamy soil which is ideal to carry electrical charges. I did soil resistivity measurements at several spots and nowhere was it more than 60 Ω/m. I begin to understand why the fruit trees on my land are doing so poor…
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_resistivity

If you’ve got rock close by underneath you can use a grounding plate, like some houses have. Spacing of your wires is then going to be the most important detail and ensuring you’ve got enough oomph in your energizer.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

If you’re running electric and you have rocky and or dry conditions, I would say you’d be much better off using a positive/negative system. You can (and should) still sink at least one ground rod, but with a pos/neg system, the animal touches both a “hot” (pos) and “cold” (neg) wire and completes the circuit without it having to travel from the hot wire, through the animal, into the ground, over to the ground connection, to give a shock. Dogs can squeeze through pretty tight wires and have a fur coat that protects them from weak shocks, so the harder it zaps the better. My husky x can waltz right through the hot wire I have set up for the cows because she barely brushes it with her fur.
I also like to bait my hot wire with a bit of bacon grease etc for the foxes and coyotes to take a bite out of, too.
I’ve used a chicken wire/fence wire apron as my negative wire too, so when the animal is standing on it, and touches the hot wire, they get an excellent zap.

positive/negative fences are often used for bee hives to keep bears away. Lots of info out there on setting them up.

I was thinking to do both, grounding the fence for taller animals which would use their noses to sniff out the wires, a charged low wire for smaller critters like skunks and possums together with a grounded wire, something like this:

_
| |
| |
| |-o <- dog-wire (80cm)
| |
| |
| |-o <- raccoon-wire (50cm)
| |
| |-o <- ground-wire (30cm)
| |-o <- skunk-wire (20cm)
| |
------------------------------- Ground

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

If you’ve got rock close by underneath you can use a grounding plate, like some houses have. Spacing of your wires is then going to be the most important detail and ensuring you’ve got enough oomph in your energizer.

Yup! The energizer, i have already learned that i need a low impedance energizer for dogs and 'coons due to their thick fur and i looked at TSC and RK and their web-sites only say »covers up to a gazillion miles of fence« nothing about impedance.
I guess i just have to drive there, grab somebody by the ears, drag her/him to the fencing department and ask a lot of questions…

 

[Clucker734]

Hi Friends,

i have never build a »real« fence, so far i have just hammered some 2x2 into the soil, tacked some chicken wire to it to tell my ducks where they can go and where not. Now since last week we have a problem with a dog from the neighborhood who is owned by unreasonable dog-owners [see: Neighbor's dog came back for our ducks today! What to do? ] and it seems we have lost one of our beloved ducks to an undiscovered dog-injury [see: RIP Curiosity Duck, June 2018 - January 13th 2021].

Anyways, every coin has two sides and the positive outcome of this is that the local Secretary of the Treasury [aka wife] has approved a reasonable budget for an electric fence.
My idea is to erect a sturdy cedar fence post every 12 meters (~40') with three T-posts every 3 meters (~10') in between to support the poly-wires.

Here is the problem: I started to dig the hole for the first cedar-post in one corner of my land but after just 40cm (16") i hit the bedrock.
I assume, that this is not deep enough for a post standing 1.8 meter (6') tall above ground. Especially if it is the corner post that will be pulled on into two directions.
The posts i have are 2.45m (8') long, so the plan was to sink them at least 60cm (2¼') into the ground.
Can anybody give me some idea how to construct a sturdy corner post when there is only 40cm of soil covering the bedrock? - Other than rent a jack-hammer!
Thank you very much in advance for your help!

just a thought no digging involved