4 things you don’t want to see in a new fence
There are four golden rules to building a fence, and this one breaks them all.
Words: Nadene Hall
RULE 1 CREATE TENSION
Wire strainers should sit at the same angle and actually create tension in the wire to hold it tight. These do not.
RULE 2 TIE UNIFORM KNOTS
Tying knots in wire isn’t just a case of wrapping it around itself.
“If a knot is not formed properly, you’re weakening the wire,” says Fencing Contractor’s Association President Simon Fuller. “Any sharp angles in wire or kinks, you’re weakening the wire so you’re taking integrity away from that fence – it is important that they’re formed properly so that your fence is durable and stock proof.
“There’s nothing right with it… what I noticed first up was that no two knots looked the same, so what you’re looking is for uniformity in the work.”
RULE 3 MEASURE YOUR GATE
You don’t need to be a fencer to know that a gate shouldn’t overlap like this. Fencing requires design, planning and measuring. Gates come in just a few standard lengths so something like this should never happen when you use a professional fencer.
RULE 4 A FENCE SHOULD BE STRAIGHT
A fence should be straight, no matter what the conditions of the soil. If an area is unfenceable, a contractor will make suggestions on how to work around it.
“There’s different, swampier, wet ground and that’s basically what it was (on this block), a peaty wet soil type,” says Simon. “There’s different ways or methods of having your end assembly or your anchor point to secure them into the ground, so there’s different techniques in a wet ground.
“I’ve been working on the complete opposite, an old river bed, pretty stony ground… we’ve actually got to pre-spike the hole, or put a pilot hole down with a steel spike, so it’s having right equipment to do the job in that situation.”
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This article first appeared in NZ Lifestyle Block Magazine.
