Holes and Poles! Installing metal fence post.

we got a lot of rain yesterday i came out to look at our post holes and that's three feet deep to about two feet filled with water there's so much clay in this earth it's not draining they're all kind of all kind of the same so that's fun so to watch and see how long it takes to join but i've drained this hole three times and you can see how quickly it's filling up again there's this huge rock that's seriously like nine or ten inches in diameter it's like a bowling ball normally the holes are like 12 inches in diameter and sometimes it goes a little wider because of a few rocks sometimes they're kind of big every once in a while we get a really really big rock i mean look at how big it is compared to my foot yeah super fun there's the first post it's gonna be same height as the existing fence just behind the retaining wall so this is the jig that's gonna hold the posts straight and let me pour concrete down the chute getting ready for concrete got the poles in and formed we just have to level them and then put some concrete in there tomorrow getting ready to do six and then we're going to do seven more over there these bags weigh 80 pounds each so i can't really help him with that all right let's do this where's the [Music] knife [Applause] [Applause] make sure it didn't get knocked out of that's good yep looks good all right hole number 11 12 13. doing that today [Music] the old fence posts and he had to move the gate inside there we initially wanted to continue the fence line from the existing post out to the street but then when we kind of looked at a little bit closer we thought it was crowding the corner and the front yard a bit too much so we're going to take the first post out and come off the second one to here and um dig a couple holes for the posts around the gate we want a nice wide gate and we decided because these metal posts are hollow to put a paver at the bottom so they don't settle and sink into the clay so these two holes are pretty easy to dig that's nice they're two feet down but then the last hole between the gate post and the corner post we ran into a little tiny rock it's huge it takes up the whole entire hole [Music] you can let go of that okay all right we measured the hole over there to the string 29 three-quarters that goes down to the top of that tape which is where we'll cut the post and then i already measured from here up to the top of the post with the 74. that's the height of the post above ground nice is that a special blade yeah it's got a metal cutting blade all right have you ever cut a metal post before nope okay let's see how it goes so that little nifty tool did okay and we bent the blade yeah it's fine now he's gonna dry fit it in the hole in there so now that pole is gone you see where it was yeah all that work and then we just cut it off yeah we gotta cover the the cup pole cause yeah seriously our luck will trip over it what am i looking at so that's the mark that the string is supposed to hit and look right on it oh that mark yes red on the money perfect means it's gonna be the right height out of the ground okay nice oh now what are you doing well the hole's so much wider than it needs to be because i was trying to get that big rock out so now i'm just gonna put this form to kind of restrict how much or limit how much concrete we have to mix up and pour look at a little tetra c down there yes you do like puzzles so he's got the cardboard in there for the cement and he's got the three braces in uh he made like a little jig right here so the pole can kind of sit in there and hold it and you put a stake over there um to hold it secure and now it is square and plumb all right let's do a little more concrete you have to be so careful not to touch anything number two for the front there's one and two front poster back to digging a hole yeah but hopefully it's the last hole the distance between the last post and the existing post is it's 10 feet which is a little bit too long um should be closer to eight feet hey babe why are you so sweaty oh gosh okay so the first first part is just kind of breaking and breaking up the ground pulling the big rocks out but you just kind of break up the bottom of the hole with this thing uh-huh your breaker bar with the breaker bar and uh that kind of gets and you can hear a couple of roots cracking in there yeah those are a lot of good of they'll sounds get down there and pull it out with my hands but it's getting a little bit harder to reach it's not as easy as just digging three feet down right right a lot of roots and rocks and problems so on the hill you you always want to measure on the lowest side of the slope yeah they're kind of faded but i marked 18 inches from the bottom 24 30 and 36. yeah that's smart to just put it right on there yeah so that when we're digging we can just kind of quickly see here we're getting close you can see the high side of the hill is already 36. yeah and the low side is not quite 24. okay how far is that oh it's about 36 inches but we hit water to see the water and look at all the mud we haven't had rain in a really long time but there's still water right down there so tomorrow before we pour we'll have to suck all that extra water out more fun digging holes yeah we're just about done good morning good morning so i came out here and of course there's water in the hole i had to drain it twice but it's so it's more than deep enough so that's good i put the paver at the bottom for stability i had to cut the form around the rock that's sticking out of the hillside and prevent the concrete from spilling on the low side and get that all secure and cut the post and level it brace it i think we're ready for concrete nice okay are you sure this is our last poll nope not sure i hope it is okay he's putting some dry concrete down there and as you can see he's got the level that he continues checking on all sides to make sure the pole's not moving but you want to see something really cool so he attached a peak string to this because at one point this got knocked off and fell right into the hole not this one but a different one and it was full of water and it went all the way down to the bottom and it was super annoying so now it's got a little string on it in case it falls it's not gonna fall in the concrete or the water and he actually did knock it off today again so it's come in handy so actually four we actually have to put the concrete in a bucket because we're trying to fill a hole that is on a really sleek steep slope right there we can't get that cement mixer over here so he's gonna have to use a bit of use the bucket to fill it up so it takes a lot longer to do it that way but kind of our only choice at this point how come you're not just pouring the bags in there yeah the first six posts or so we that's what we did we just poured the bag in but it takes a while to pour the bag and sometimes the bag gets caught on these tines and then oh yeah and it's just really really hard on my back to hold that bag for that long so we found this works pretty good and then you can put the right mix in this is how old people do it right babe one scoop at a time so sometimes it's a little tricky to get the right mix and what i found is if there's not enough water the concrete mix balls up there's a lot of little balls rolling around here so this is what he was talking about earlier when there's like little if it's too wet it's sloppy and so the right mix is somewhere in between you can see how it kind of falls when it reaches the top it just falls down onto the bottom and it looks evenly mixed i think we're good right cool looks like the hole is filled and we used seven bags of concrete in that hole well the smaller bags yeah the 60 pound bags not the 80 pound bags and the very last part is mounding it that just kind of helps keep the water from like when it rains or sprinklers or whatever if it's flat water will just or if it's concave water will just sit there and it'll rot away the post even these metal posts will eventually rust out so you got to kind of do everything you can to make them last as long as possible [Music]

Channel: Fix it - Change it

Views: 2,159

Rating: 4.0476189 out of 5

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Id: ikprBJEP4Gs

Length: 12min 45sec (765 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021