beppington
Elite Member
Me & dad have fenced about 1,350 feet so far. 8' posts spacing. ~170 posts.
Augered all of them until this past weekend when the posts were pretty close to an AT&T fiberoptic line, & ATT said we had to hand-dig them (they helped). I don't know if they can enforce that, since I'm diggin on my own line, but it is a right-of-way/ easement, & I figured we might as well be cooperative. So there were 14 to hand-dig. I did 7, ATT guy did 7.
However ... I discovered that I'm pretty sure the time, & maybe even effort, to put in a fence post is actually less when digging by hand, compared to using the tractor/ auger ... :confused3:
The auger tends to get easily pushed around, off-line, by even say 1/2"-3/4" dia roots, so each hole has anywhere from a little to a lot of "sideways" digging to get the hole in the right spot, as well as clean-out even in holes that are in the right spot.
Also, with the 8 or 9" auger we're using, the augered holes are much bigger than our hand-dug holes, especially after we've had to "move" them to the right spot, so there's more back-fill & tamping that has to be done.
Not to mention, a waste of tractor: If I can complete them faster by hand-digging, why waste the tractor augering?
What do ya'll think? (I've got about 260 more to do :shocked
Augered all of them until this past weekend when the posts were pretty close to an AT&T fiberoptic line, & ATT said we had to hand-dig them (they helped). I don't know if they can enforce that, since I'm diggin on my own line, but it is a right-of-way/ easement, & I figured we might as well be cooperative. So there were 14 to hand-dig. I did 7, ATT guy did 7.
However ... I discovered that I'm pretty sure the time, & maybe even effort, to put in a fence post is actually less when digging by hand, compared to using the tractor/ auger ... :confused3:
The auger tends to get easily pushed around, off-line, by even say 1/2"-3/4" dia roots, so each hole has anywhere from a little to a lot of "sideways" digging to get the hole in the right spot, as well as clean-out even in holes that are in the right spot.
Also, with the 8 or 9" auger we're using, the augered holes are much bigger than our hand-dug holes, especially after we've had to "move" them to the right spot, so there's more back-fill & tamping that has to be done.
Not to mention, a waste of tractor: If I can complete them faster by hand-digging, why waste the tractor augering?
What do ya'll think? (I've got about 260 more to do :shocked