How to stretch a chain link fence - 23 ESSENTIAL tips + helpful advice!

in order to stretch a chain-link fence you need to have three tools the first tool you will need is a tension bar now this slides right in between inside of the chain-link fence loops the next thing you'll need is something to attach to tension bar so this is like a fence stretcher you know bar you can see kind of what it looks like these three hooks go around your tension bar and then you will use some sort of like strap or clamp to uh to wrap through here and pull this tight now if you don't want to spend about 30 at menards to buy one of those metal fence stretchers you could do something similar to it using a 2x4 that's maybe you know three or four feet long on one side you can put in hooks three hooks one at the top middle and bottom sticking out kind of like my finger sticking out like this and then on this side of the two by four you can put an eye hook that screws into here and that would also do the trick yet another option is you could just convince your linebacker nfl neighbor to pull it for you and just grab the tension bar and just run with it that would probably also work the next item you need is something like a fence stretcher clamp kind of like this one or a come along or you could even use something like toe straps you know something like uh you know something like this that you can kind of ratchet they'll get tighter and tighter that has a hook on one side so before i go outside and demonstrate how to stretch a chain link fence i want to make sure that you know to be careful to not over stretch your chain link fence you're supposed to be able to squeeze one of the chain link fence diamonds and have it give a little bit something like that tension's probably about right where there's a little bit of give but not that much so if you look here my fence is actually a little too tight probably one ratchet too tight i don't know if you can see here but it looks like this diamond might be a little bit wider than the rest that might have happened because i used a little bit too much tension one thing to keep in mind is always have your nice side of your fence the smooth side and all the nice side of your bolts facing outward to your neighbors once you get the fence mesh rolled out all you know 50 feet of it or so you want to stretch it by hand and pull it kind of nice and tight and nice and vertical flat up against the line posts you then can take some wires and attach them to the top rail to help the fence hug the top rail and these should not be right next to the line post because you're going to be stretching the fence and if it moves too far you don't want it to hit the top rail cap on top of the line post it's important to note that when you are attaching a line post to your chain link mesh to use at least three wire ties to loop around your fence and to attach it to the line post at the top middle and bottom that gives you those three points to distribute all that tension that's built up between the prior post and your subsequent line post and if you don't do this like say if you did the top and middle but not the bottom you can just imagine that it would lose all that tension on the bottom and it would be all loose at the bottom and tight at the top now i stretched and assembled most of the fence last night what i like to do is i like to go every other post so i will go i'll start at the second line post and stretch the fence and then attach it to the first line post and then i'll go to the third line post and stretch it and then i'll attach it to the second line post but if you wanted to you could honestly stretch you know from line post you know four or five down the row and stretch it and assemble multiple line posts at the same time you want to have one extra tension bar than what you actually need so that way you can use it for stretching but not run out of tension bars when you need to do the final stretch to secure it to the terminal post okay let's go outside so most people recommend taking your tension wire and running it along the bottom in between the two terminal posts before you attach and stretch your your fabric to your uh fence post but i didn't do that so i'm going to actually have to weave this tension wire through the bottom in between the line posts and and the fabric uh and then you use the little hog ties little like pieces of metal wires to kind of secure the this wire to the fence fabric and that just kind of helps it to not deform if someone kicks a soccer ball and it hits the bottom of the fence or if a animal tries to climb underneath it makes it harder for them to do that i apologize i don't have a lot of fencing to demonstrate right now but i do need to restretch the end here it's a little too loose you can see when i squeeze it there's just too much give i'm going to bend this wire here at the top and kind of twist it to take this off and then i'm going to move the fence over about another inch i'm going to stretch it and attach it just to add a little bit more tension because this is a little bit too loosey-goosey for my liking pliers and gloves can come in handy because you have to bend lots of little pieces of metal huh so since this is the last stretch there's gonna be a little bit more give um because there's going to be the slack in between right here and the terminal post so it should be a little bit tighter on this side so um the tightness combined with the slack of that side should make it about the right tightness tension bar here we go some tension bars have a little hole at the bottom some don't if yours does what you can do is you can bend this open this bottom loop and then you can kind of use it to kind of make sure the tension bar won't slip down time to put these uh tension bands back on and hopefully this is tight enough and tighten the net on before it ouch squeeze i should have paid attention the mesh is a little too close to the ground and not quite up to the bar so now i've got to loosen it and then kind of drag everything up okay so i just uh kind of repositioned these up to be a little higher so that way the very top of the chain link would be kind of right where i want it just above the bar and i'm going to go ahead and loosen up this clamp by shaking it give it a little shake and see how the tension is now oh yeah that's what i like just a little bit of gear but not that much now i can take this down can take this extra attention bar out now i just need to put down the tension wire i'm gonna have to loop it in between the mesh and the line posts and that will uh now pull it nice and tight i've got this little clamp tool that i can use to kind of tighten the tension wire and then we use a little hog tie clips to clip the wire to the fence mesh you know every half foot or every foot when you're stretching fence sometimes you'll see imperfections but usually if you just take things slow and you try to be consistent at consistent heights and you know make consistent tension usually when you're done you get something that's pretty beautiful like this and it's just so rewarding to to do a fence it's fun and i would highly highly recommend doing it yourself it's a learning experience hopefully your fence will look nice feel free to comment below if you have any questions or tips or suggestions thank you so much for watching this video and i hope you have a marvelous safe day

Channel: Lifey Guy

Views: 125,128

Keywords: how to stretch a chain link fence, how to stretch chain link fence

Id: mL10Elt0WQs

Length: 9min 4sec (544 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 29 2020