"Puckdropper" wrote in message
reenews.net...
"Swingman" wrote in
:

"Mike Patterson" wrote in message

On Thu, 9 Aug 2007 17:11:01 -0500, "Swingman" wrote:


In the old days I could _precisely_ set the height of a fence post by
the surgical application of a post hole digger and one half of a pair
of Sears Roebuck brogans.

... dig a little deeper than necessary, then kick in an appropriate
amount
of dirt.

If you want a 6' fencepost, well sure. But if you want say a 4' post,
digging 4'+ down to backfill 3 " seems a little...tiring.

Really now? Anyone who needs 4' posts and is too damn stupid to buy 8
footers and cut 'em in half deserves to be tired.


Are you just sitting these things on the ground? You'd need 10' cut in
half to give you ANY support from IN the ground.

The old rule of thumb was 1/3 in the ground... for a 6' post use 9', for a
4' post use 6', etc.

Personally, how I approach the installation of posts depends on the
conditions. In "soil" I dig a bit deep and throw some crushed stone in the
bottom to tweak the height. In "rocky soil" or areas with ledge I dig as
deep as I can get and cut the posts to length after installation.

I've spent time recently preparing to install a privacy fence and I fully
expect to run into rocks when I dig the post holes. Today I had to move one
large rock out of way and bury it--way too big to move any appreciable
distance without heavy equipment. My son was "helping" me... at one point I
had a pick under an edge of the rock to lift it up as I needed to remove
some broken brick debris from underneath it so it would sit low enough. I
couldn't do it myself so I asked my son to pull the errant brick out... so
he comes over and stands on the rock I'm struggling to hold up while he's
pulling the brick out! "Sorry Dad!"

John