Our poor backyard fence has been falling apart for the last several years and it is finally time to replace it! We were waiting until the ground wasn't too wet and it wasn't too cold! We started replacing the fence in our courtyard several years ago after a huge windstorm decided it was time. At the time I was still in school and right after Christmas so we and our neighbor could only afford two panels, and not the premade ones. It was the first time that Jack and I ever did a fence so we really had to learn as we went. A few months later we decided it was time to finish the courtyard fence and add the new side fence and gate to separate the courtyard from the backyard. That time went a lot easier and didn't take as long, thankfully! About a year later it was time to finish the remaining fence between our two houses. This was a really long section and Jack didn't want to have to use a fence post shovel so we spent the extra money to rent a two person augur. This machine was really hard to use in our hard and rock filled dirt. Even thought it was rough it saved a lot of time and we had the whole section up in only a few days. A few months ago we started saving to replace the back fence since our house was up to an alley we were going to have to pay for all of it and we were still trying to pay off our debt as fast as possible. So the week finally came and we decided ahead of time to take an extra two days off from work so we could get this done as quickly as we could because we didn't want the backyard to be exposed to the alley. The night before we went to the hardware store and purchased the 3 bags of small gravel, 10 bags of quick set fence cement, 5 8' foot metal fence post, the 10 metal brackets, the 10 8' foot 2 x 4 and over 500 fence panels. This first morning we went a picked up the augur, this time we rented a one person hydraulic augur. We measured. d and marked where each post was to go and started digging. I got the fun job with removing any root or large rock that got in the way so it wouldn’t jam the augur as Jack dug the 3 foot hole. The last step for the day was to cement the post in place. Fill half the hole with the gravel to allow proper drainage, add a little of the dry quick dry cement on top. Place the post centered in the hole and add the remaining the bag of cement, plus one more full bag or until the hole is filled. Spray water on the cement until wet, the cement will draw water also from the ground. Allow at least 12 hours to set before moving onto the next phase of the fence.
