Tips on setting fence posts

I have been setting fence posts since I was a boy on the farm. These tips represent some of what I learned.

• Check for electrical wires, phone lines, gas lines, water pipes, or other dangers where you plan to dig. If you need to dig near such lines, follow your utility company’s guidelines for digging near utilities.

• Clear brush and trees from your fence line. This will increase visibility and make for easier digging.

• Cut the grass extra low along the planned fence line. This will save chopping and walking through tall grass and weeds. And it will keep your backfill dirt more free of organic matter.

• The first two posts you put in should be the posts on both ends of your fence line. Use these as your guide all through the project. Do the math now to see if one or both posts should be adjusted to allow for consistent spacing of fence boards.

• Keep it straight. Back in the day, we could get by with some good eye-balling on some pasture fence lines, but it’s best to tighten a string line or fence wire between the end posts. This string line should run along one side of the base of where the other posts will be set. You don’t want the string to split the center of the posts.

• Determine the distance between posts. This will be based on what length of rail, wire, or board you will be using.

• Unless all posts are perfectly plumb – top to bottom, side to side – using the top of posts as a guide will give you a false reading. Unless your posts are set in concrete, the tops can shift as the bottom dirt gives.

• After marking the spot where a post hole will be, hold the string out of the way with your leg or a short stick. This makes it quicker to occasionally check and adjust the hole location and size as you dig.

• Check the string line itself once in a while to make sure it isn’t hung up somewhere, putting a tangent in your fence line.

• Check your back sight. To keep from having to do some re-digging, occasionally sight down the fence line from both ends.

• Using a post hole digger usually requires less dirt to be removed, but extra large posts may require using a round point shovel.

• If you have more holes and money than time and energy, consider renting a power posthole auger.

• As you backfill dirt around the post, tamp the dirt every few inches. If you wait to tamp down until all the dirt is in the hole, the post will not be as firmly imbedded.

• Step back once in a while to look at the entire project. Sometimes you can’t see the fence for all the posts.