Easy Loose Fence Post Repair

hey everybody first youtube video here my name is Dave kind of a home improvement guy semi-retired learned a lot from YouTube like to share a cool idea that I learned on how to repair a 4x4 fence post that's rotted at the base I have done it by the dreaded dig it up and pull it out method which is a pain in the butt takes forever and I discovered a product and have kind of refined it slightly let me show you how this is done so these are the easy menders by Simpson picked them up at Home Depot for about 8 bucks apiece you will need two of them to do your job and they come kind of blunt on the tip and after doing quite a few repairs I realized you can make it a lot easier if you sharpen them let me get one the sharpened here I just used a 4 inch grinder I think you can see the edges sharpened and I went all the way up the edge here because that will be a leading edge when we pound these in so it just takes a few minutes if you can get a four and a half inch grinder and sharpen the tips so let's go out and fix this fence post fools you need a cordless drill I've got a Phillips bit on here some these are probably two inch deck screws small sledgehammer a level some wrenches this is a 3/8 by 6 inch galvanized bolt nut and washer because this will be out in the weather and I've got an extra long 3/8 bit you could probably get by over the standard bit just be a little different work and a lot of very large c-clamp helps a lot again you might be able to come up with a little different idea for and a smaller sledge helps and you may need a pry bar of some kind so let's go out and fix so I'm outside of the post we're going to fix took off a few of the fence pickets here and down at the bottom you'll usually have two two by fours connected to the post and you need to create a little space I use this pickle fork and wedged it in to create a little space for these to fit you need about a 1/2 3/4 of an inch clearance and if these nails are in the way you're gonna have to take those out and reposition those on this one I think we have enough room so I'll go around the other side and show you how this works so this is one I'd repaired previously so you can see the the goal is to get these wedged and get that bolt and some deck screws in next to it and if we grab this pole you could see that this thing is sturdy so the next thing you got to do is get down and clean down to the concrete get any stones or anything out of here that might be in the way so of course I picked one by a rosebush but I've done five of these and realized how cool this is this is probably a 30 year old fence and I only have five that are bad so I think this will buy us a lot of time so we're gonna put the pointed end down and get it in close to the wood as we can and it's okay if it tips out a little bit I like to start it with the small hammer so what it's doing is it's going in the rotten wood up against the concrete and wedging it and then we'll go to the other side so I'm on the other side same thing start it with a small and it's okay if they open up on you and spread out a little bit they have this little ledge that's made to hammer I don't find that to work out very well and it's okay if you booger the top up a little bit so I've got my C clamp on there and I've cinched it down and they don't have to be up perfectly tight but do the best you can and then pick the the piece that looks closest to the ground try to get them about equal I think the one on the left is a little bit lower so that's the one I'm gonna put the deck screws in there's some holes provided may be hard to see but when you put the deck screws in you've got to use some good push on your cordless drill so I'll do that off camera and show you what this side looks like so you can see with the two decks cures I've been able to draw this up pretty close to the four by four C clamp fell down because I took up the slack and the other one I've still got a draw up but before you screw the other side take a look from this perspective and get them about even because when we get that screwed in we're gonna use this hole provided and try to line drill from one side to the other so hold on so the other ones drawing up and by my eyeball I think this one is a little higher than this one so I'm starting my drill with a long bit a little bit of an upward angle when I get through to the other side I can see where it's peeking through and adjust it as I need to so depending on your luck this is not too bad you may have to try from both sides probably don't need a bit as long as I have I just had that and now we're going to set the galvanized bulb in now it's the time to put a level on it you might be able to correct a little bit before you tighten the bolt down so I've got the bolt in washer and nut darrel galvanized to prevent corrosion out here and we'll go ahead and tighten this up check it with the level as I said before you tighten it so now that I've tightened it down these screws you could snug them up a little bit they probably don't add a lot of strength but I would do that and then I cut the excess off you can use a hacksaw or die grinder but just for safety I got grandkids still on them getting hurt or the dog getting hurt we don't need to show it on the video but we'll go back outside and secure the two by fours here hammer them back in replace the slats and you're good to go and this stud is or two four by four I can't hardly rock it and that thing is in there so I hope this helped you out please don't waste your time making weird comments I'm just trying to help people but appreciate positive ones thanks so much bye-bye

Channel: David Hartman

Views: 102,765

Keywords: Loose Fence post, rotted fence post, fence post repair

Id: Cww77DVU-bY

Length: 8min 32sec (512 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 09 2018