Hey everybody. This is an area of our property that we are getting fenced in to be a chicken
run, so today I'm going to show you how we're going to string up this first part of the fence.
Rather than try to wrap a fence all the way around the post, we're going to individually
stretch fence from one post to another, cutting it at each intersection.
One thing you need to take into consideration when installing your fence is if there is
any slope on the property. You don't want to attach your fence perfectly plumb onto
this post and then find out you have even a one percent grade going up towards your
other post because then you're going to have problems aligning the entire fence, so what
we're going to do is temporarily hang this post with some very loose staples so that
we can determine what angle it needs to be at and then proceed from there.
Okay, so what we're using as a guide for now, the fence is still extremely loose but we're
making sure that the bottom is flush and then we'll put in this loose tack up top and then
we'll start to arrange things so that we can pull it tighter.
So trying to do everything as taut as we can by hand, this is as far as we are able
to get. As you can see, there's an awful lot of slack still in there and as you can see
by looking at the fence in relation to this pole we're going over about 6 inches from
center, closer to 8, than where we are in center down at the bottom and that is showing
the elevation change from front to back. So now let me show you what we're going to do to tighten this up.
Now just to explain to you a couple of the tools that we need in order to stretch the
fence. There's probably a hundred different ways to do this. I've seen people do it using
a wench on their vehicle, there's just so many different ways. We're going to make use
of the tools that we have and that's comprising of a tension bar that you can find in the chain-link
section of your hardware store, a fence puller and both of these are designed to help spread
the pressure out on the fence because the next piece of equipment is the Come-Along
and it's what we're going to use to crank the fence and pull the tension on it, but
if we were to just have one point of contact on this fence we're going to damage it and
probably pop some of the welds. So, by combining that with the tension bar and the fence puller
we can spread that force out across the fence on many different points and get a lot more
tension before we worry about causing any damage to the fence.
Okay, so the next option that really presents itself to you is where are you going to connect
to this fence and what are you going to connect to so that you can stretch? If you're in a
big open field, probably the only thing that's available to you is the corner post. You can
see in our case that there's a cedar tree behind here, but as the image makes it look,
though it's a little more extreme on the image, the cedar tree is in front of the fence, meaning
that if we tried to pull tension on the fence toward the cedar tree, we're going to end
up about a foot away from the post that we're trying to connect to. If you had a point of
contact that were, as it is in the picture, to the left of the fence, then you could connect
to that and pull the fence from behind the post. The other option to you is to bring
your tension bar and fence puller out in front of the post, probably a good 3 or 4 feet,
if not more, and then pull tension and connect your Come-Along to the post, pulling the fence
to the post. Now when you do that, you're going to have a slack area between where your
Come-Along attaches to the fence and the post but the idea here is, by the time that you
release everything, the little bit of slack that was there is not going to really present
itself and you will be able to have a tight fence.
Another option that you always have is to move your tractor in place and create an anchor
point for you to be able to go on. So, I like this option better because I'd rather not
connect to the corner post because of the slack that it leaves behind, so by having
my tractor over there, I can pull and get the tension that I need on the entire fence.
One note of caution here, as you connect everything, make sure that whatever you anchor to is at
the same height as your anchor point on the fence. That way you don't end up trying to
pull up or down on the fence.
Alright, connecting the tensioner is easy enough to do. You're going to want to intertwine
it into your fence. I'm going to go two horizontals on one side of the tension bar and then two
horizontals on the other side and connect it all the way down.
So as you can see, the point of this is to give you something to pull on that's not going
to easily bend because you have that width of the tension bar to pull against.
Okay, so now that you have your tensioner in your fence, you're going to attach the
fence puller to it. Just do your best to make sure that you're in the middle of it so that
you're not too high or too low, and you're just going to hook on just like that. Now
I've already connected to my anchor point and I'm just going to connect onto here.
Now our goal is simply to ratchet the Come-Along slowly until we start tensioning the fence
and then make sure that everything is aligning the way that we want.
You can see there's still a slight bend in the fence, but this is as tight as we're going
to be able to get it without damaging the fence material itself. If this were something
like a barbed wire or just a field wire fence then we would be able to get this much more
taut. In this case, what we'll do is secure these nails, or staples onto the fence post
and then use t-posts to support the structure throughout the span.
One thing you really need to remember to take into consideration is what direction your
fence is pulling to where you're going to put in the staples. You can see, this is the
end of the fence that we had the Come-Along attached to so the fence is wanting to go
back that way, so we have the staple on the left side of the vertical wire to help control
that desire for the fence to go that way.
Okay everybody, I hope that gives you some sense of what you need to do to be able to
stretch a fence. As with so many other projects, the next step is going to have to wait for
another payday, but now you have the essential information that you need to go forward and
start your project. If you have any questions or comments, please go ahead and leave them
below and as always, thank you for watching.