Why Isn't My Electric Fence Working? - Tips Every Farmer Should Know

in my experience electric fencing is one of those things that people either love or they hate and a lot of the time I think those who are opposed to electric fence feel the way they do because they think it's unreliable or that it's overly complicated hi everyone this is Andrew at Plainview farm and in today's video I'm going to share some information that I think a lot of farmers who use electric fence will find very helpful so hang around so in this video I'm going to go over a handful of ways that you can troubleshoot your electric fence to make sure that you're getting the most out of your fencing system in any kind of diagnostic the best place to start is with the simplest possible solution so here's troubleshooting item number one does your Energizer have power whether your fence charger is battery powered solar powered or it plugs into an outlet losing power is obviously going to shut your system down and honestly I think a lot of people would be surprised how often electricians go out on Surface calls only to flip a breaker because the person who called them didn't check it to begin with so again you want to start with the simplest possible problem which is to make sure sure that the unit has power and with this we'll call it step 1A you want to make sure that all your connections are tight whether it's the connections that go to the Energizer connections to cut out switches if you have them in your system connections to jumper wires connections to your your ground rods you want to make sure that all of those are good and tight because a loose connection can cause you a great deal of problems you may have heard the saying loose lip sync ships well here's another one for you loose connections can cause a failure in your electric fencing system did you expect it to run now the next thing to do is make sure that your Energizer is putting out the correct amount of voltage and one of the best tools for that is a multimeter so you just connect the positive lead to the positive terminal so you just connect the positive lead to the positive terminal and the negative lead to your ground when you do this your Energizer should read somewhere near the maximum voltage that it's rated for now if the voltage is low meaning half or less of the rated voltage for that Energizer then there's probably a fault inside the equipment itself and chances are it's either going to need to be repaired or replaced the third step is to make sure that your grounding system is doing its job one of the most common problems with electric fencing systems is inadequate ground and frankly this is the reason that a lot of people who think electric fencing systems are unreliable think the way that they do most manufacturers have similar requirements whenever it comes to the grounding system for their energizers which is three ground rods usually galvanized because that's what the wire is spaced 10 feet apart and these ground rods are usually relatively close to the Energizer now something that a lot of people don't always consider is how dry the ground is where they're putting the ground rods and whether or not three ground rods themselves will truly be adequate three ground rods space 10 feet apart is basically just your starting point you're most likely going to need more than that if the ground does not stay at least somewhat moist now this may not be for everybody because my grounding system has a lot of Overkill in it I have multiple ground rods throughout the fencing system that runs around the perimeter of the property and the reason that I have this is because I want to make sure that anything that touches this electric fence specifically anything that goes through the electric fence is going to feel the full force of the Energizer I have all of those ground rods tied back into the wires that are not hot in the fence the ground wires so so again whenever something touches both wires the hot and the ground they're going to complete that circuit and again they're going to feel the full force of the Energizer now this works great if you're trying to not only keep animals in but also keep Predators out now dogs foxes coyotes they don't want to go through this fence because they know that they're going to get hit no matter where they try to go through it at I'll mention this as well that we also have a whole lot fewer deer going through our property than we did before when I first installed this fence deer would often run through it and get shocked and I'd have insulators that would be popped off of the posts I haven't had an insulator popped off of a post in months and I think that's because in all reality we've trained deer to go around our fence so back to troubleshooting there are a couple ways that you can test out your ground system on your electric fence the first way is to actually drive a piece of pipe or Rod or something like that into the ground and then connect it tie it off to one of the hot wire years now you may have to drive that Rod or piece of pipe 10 or 12 inches into the ground to make sure that you truly get it shorted out and of course if you're like me you're probably going to want to shut the Energizer off whenever you do this I know there are some guys out there that don't mind to work on electric fence whenever it's on but I'm definitely not one of them so once you've got it grounded out you're going to want to turn the system back on and check the voltage if you have more than 2 000 volts going through the fence you need more ground rods now another way you can test your ground system is to use a tester like this one and place it on a ground wire to see if there's any feedback coming through it if you have more than three or four hundred volts coming back through your ground again you need more ground rods in order for an electric fence to work the way that it's designed the power that the Energizer is sending out has to be sent back to the Energizer through the ground completing the loop if your ground system is not strong then the loop is not going to be strong and you're not going to feel the full effect of the Energizer so here's Maybe be the best way that I can explain it if you've ever seen a bird maybe perched on the top wire of an electric fence you may Wonder well how's that bird not getting shocked well the bird's not getting shocked because the bird's not grounded if the bird were to reach down and grab a wire that's not energized the bird would most likely at least be partially grounded and then it would get shocked because it has completed the loop so I'm going to take just a moment here and ask you that if you're enjoying this video please hit that like button so other folks can find it as well and if you like this kind of content please hit that subscribe button and the notification Bell that way you'll know when we post a new video so if you have power to the unit you're getting good voltage from the unit and your ground system is adequate now you need to test the fence itself so for this you're going to want to make sure again that all of your connections are good and turn on your Energizer and starting near the Energizer work your way out to the furthest point of your electric fencing system and as you work your way out every 50 feet or so you're going to want to stop stop and see what kind of voltage reading you're getting now this fence tester or fault finder that I have will actually give you an arrow on the screen that will point you in the direction of your fault it's not perfect but it is definitely helpful so as you go through the electric fence system you want to check the voltage of the hot wire and look for a voltage drop once the voltage drops then you need to start working your way back to where it was higher and looking for something that could possibly be grounding out the fence now the fault or the short in the system can be caused by any number of things whether it's a tree that may have fallen on the fence and has caused it to ground out or a broken insulator that's allowed the fence to bump up against a metal post and ground out or it's vegetation that has grown up into the fence that's causing it to ground out or even wires that have been Tangled together where an animal has run through the fence that's causing it to be ground out honestly it can be any number of things that can cause your fence system to ground out and I'll mention a quick side note here it's good to buy high quality insulators that will last over time and it's good to keep your fences clean doing those two things are going to save you a lot of trouble whenever it comes to shorts or faults in the future so as I said the easiest way again to find those faults is to walk the fence and look for them now if you have multiple zones in your fencing system you can actually shut down certain areas and then turn them on one by one and see if you have a voltage drop that way doing that allows you to isolate your problem much faster so now I'm going to give you a bonus tip all brands of energizers are rated in basically a couple ways one way is Acres so an Energizer will be rated for 80 or 100 acres and the other way is Miles now those energizers that are rated in acres can be a little bit harder to nail down in terms of what you're getting so make sure that you understand what you're buying when you buy your Energizer now the other energizers that are rated in Miles such as 40 100 200 miles those are a little bit easier to figure but they can be rated a couple different ways themselves that can be 40 or 100 miles of single wire fence or that can be 40 or 100 miles of multiple wire fence so again you definitely want to make sure you're aware of exactly how your Energizer is rated sometimes a voltage drop when everything else that I've talked about in this video is exactly what it's supposed to be is nothing more than the result of an underpowered Energizer so you definitely want to make sure that you're getting the Energizer that is the appropriate size for the fencing system you have bonus tip number two an Energizer that's too big for your system can also cause you problems so my best advice on that is to figure out exactly how much wire you have and then buy an Energizer That's rated for your system of course it is okay to buy one that's a little bit overpowered especially if you're planning on adding fence later so as always I hope you enjoyed this video we'll see you next time

Channel: Plane View Farm

Views: 8,851

Keywords: electric fence, electric fencing, small farm fence, barbed wire fence, barb wire fence, high tensile electric fence, fence troubleshooting, speedrite, gallagher, patriot, zareba, parmak, cyclops, energizer, fence charger

Id: dYfoqdtk_Ek

Length: 9min 38sec (578 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 17 2023