Hello guys in this video i'm going to show you how to concrete in a timber fence post correctly
so it lasts and we're going to start right now. So there's a couple of main things that you can do to
ensure that your post is secure in the ground and doesn't rot but the first thing that we're going
to do is we're going to have to dig out this old fence post and woody's going to do that right now.
A quick tip for you if you're breaking out a fence post is if you break out one side
of the post and then lever the post over it's going to
make it a lot easier for you to access the rest of the concrete.
So the first key point in concreting in any post not only a timber post but that is getting the
depth and the width of the hole correct. For a six foot high fence the hole should be
at least 600 millimeters deep and 300 millimeters wide
but the other key thing that you can do to ensure that you have a strong stable fence
post is you want to be digging the hole wider at the bottom than you do at the top
you bell bottom the bottom of the hole which means that there's going to be a sufficient
weight at the bottom of this post to anchor this post to the ground and it will never move.
Okay key point number two is making sure that the bottom of this post is protected from rot.
First thing you can do is when you're concreting in the fence post is you make sure that your
concrete goes right up to the point at which the post meets the ground and you want to go
above ground level with the concrete and then smooth it away from from the post to allow all
the water to drain away. That's gonna just stop any soil from collecting around the bottom of the post
and rotting the post a lot quicker than what it should do. Now the second thing you can do is you
can add a bitumen product to the bottom of the posts. Now you can buy bitumen that you paint on
which can be very messy and leave an untidy finish around the bottom of the post
or you can use one of these which are called a post saver. These only cost about two or three
pounds each um about five pound fitted to each post. So i've marked the ground level on this post
which is where the gravel board is going to be on our fence and then i've marked about an inch
and a half two inches above that line and this is where the the post saver is gonna sit at least two
inches above ground level and it shows it on the actual sleeve itself where you need to position it.
So first of all you're going to slide it over the end and like i said you're going to
just go beyond that ground level and then it's got a little mark on there.
This is the fun bit. When you're blow torching these you've got make sure that you don't stay
in one position for too long because otherwise you'll just burn straight through the post sleeve
and then it's not going to be worth anything. Okay just keep running your blowtorch over the surface.
Just try not to stay in one position for too long like i said otherwise you're
burn straight through it. Just trying to heat it up so it heat shrinks around the post.
You want to make sure it's very tight around the top part here
and then this way roller comes in. You wet that and then you push that down on top.
Get your wet roller and just roll it out
and then that will just push all that bitumen in that's on the inside of that post sleeve
down onto the post and stop any water ingress. You've heat shrunk this post saver down onto
the post rolled it out now that's going to protect the very bottom of this post
and it's going to add years and years onto the life of your post.
Okay so that's what one looks like fitted on the post and the post in the ground.
You see that little white dotted line there that's ground level and then the post sleeve is two inches
above that and that's just gonna obviously protect the most critical point on the post
that rots first. Thank you for watching guys don't forget to subscribe and hit the
notification bell to be updated when new content is uploaded. Thanks for watching see you next time.