I am posting some photographs of the fence I just finished building. The wood fences blew down in hurricane Ike, almost a year and a half ago. I finally had some time at home when the weather was good and the soil was still soft. This was 275 linear feet of 6 ft cedar fence; 37 posts, 646 cedar fence boards, 56 80 lb bags of concrete. It was a challenging project. I have not built a fence since we bought our first house in Salem. It was a very small yard and the ground was level. Here the ground is not level, the old fence was not straight and many of the old posts and concrete were still in the ground along with a large tree stump I had to work around. The soil here is clay. They refer to it as Texas "gumbo" when it gets wet it sticks to everything like glue. When it is dry it is as hard as concrete. The trick is to build when the soil is wet enough to dig but not too wet so that it won't stick to the tools. It was still pretty wet. I rented a one man post hole auger which proved to be a real workout. I dug about a third of the holes by hand and finished the last 22 with the auger. The layout was a real challenge. I tried to use a 50 ft string and follow the old posts but that proved to be a crooked course. I picked out a post mid way and built to that and then straight from there to the back post. There is a noticeable crook in the fence line. I have decided that either the front end is a foot or two on my side of the property line or the middle was off. I think it is the front. If the fence blows down again while I live here I'll have it surveyed before I rebuild it.
