welcome back to Steve Robb reviews today I'm going to show you a little bit of a tip that
I do on my 4x4 posts after I've installed them in the ground and this is one year later since
I built this actual pull off gate and an entrance will gate going into my backyard I know it's kind
of dark here and everything but I'm going to open up the gate and I'm going to show you what I do
and the reason why well here is my gate project here that I did last year and you're looking at
that post there and you can obviously tell there's something going on there right so I did this and
you know this was a really nice project and if you like I'll put a link down below if you want
to know how to build something like this and it's it's not that hard you know it's a long lift off
gate so if you wanted to yeah you could just take the whole thing off and you can get large
pieces of equipment in here if you like but let's just take a look at this post and we'll start off
at the bottom here and you can definitely tell with all the light in the cracks and over time
it takes about a year and your posts will develop these cracks in them and all I do is in the first
season like last year what I did was I I just put the latex caulking in there or you could
actually use some like construction adhesive if you like and you can pick whatever color
you like I mean I could have put like a tan color to match the post but in my experience this here
will go dark over time as well now I did this about four days ago and you can see what that
does right and it just fills up all the cracks and of course yeah I had to get in the back here
because you can tell this is a huge crack down in here too so let's go in the shop and explain
to you why I've been doing this for about forty years yes so about 40 years since the time then
I start using this pressure-treated wood I will tell you something I have noticed now I haven't
installed too many cedar 4x4 posts but I must say that the cedar does not split as much in my
experience as you know the pressure-treated and all our pressure treated wood here like
in my location is all spruce so I mean it's it's not the the ideal wood because you know
spruce well yeah it's got a lot of you know branches on the tree itself and you know it
does be quite susceptible to splitting and what do I use well I just use any latex caulking and
the reason why I fill up all them cracks is I've noticed myself compared to not doing it
to a post now maybe I would say out of all the posts that I've ever put in I have done some
that I haven't treated and the ones like this here that I have treated with just filling the
cracks with the latex caulking huge difference in how long the post will last and how big the
cracks actually get over time because it seems as it rains you know and snows and the moisture goes
on the crack itself well it starts to build up moisture in you know the cracking and checking
on the post itself and over time well yeah you see a lot of deterioration of your post that's
actually above the ground now I show everybody in a previous video on how to protect the post below
the ground but you know you have to actually do it above the ground as well and I think it's a
good tip and something that I've done that I thought maybe I would just mention today
so thanks for joining me here today and if you haven't seen this channel before you're welcome
to subscribe I'll do my best in the future I'm providing good content and good tips Cheers
you