{"id":5666,"date":"2022-05-23T14:46:47","date_gmt":"2022-05-23T20:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grunschev.com\/wordpress\/?p=5666"},"modified":"2022-05-23T14:46:50","modified_gmt":"2022-05-23T20:46:50","slug":"fence-gate-repair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grunschev.com\/wordpress\/2022\/05\/fence-gate-repair\/","title":{"rendered":"Fence\/Gate Repair"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At the end of March or early April (I don’t recall exactly), two of the posts holding up the fence on the north side of my garage failed during a windstorm. They just rotted through at ground level until a nice, stiff breeze blew the fence over. By “stiff breeze”, I really mean sustained winds exceeding 40mph with gusts over 50mph. I see we had four days like that between 3\/22 and 4\/5. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I did my last fence repair (a section on the south side of the house), I just set the posts in some angular pea-sized gravel rather than concrete. The original builder didn’t use concrete and it wasn’t the posts that failed, so I didn’t see the need to set the posts in concrete. Once you tamp the gravel in, the edges lock together making it quite strong. It has been nine or ten years and none of those posts move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, though, the existing fence was set in concrete. I was disappointed, but not surprised. The post next to the garage wall was your standard 4×4 post. The other post, on which a gate hangs, was a 4×6. I searched the internet but didn’t find anybody who had 4×6 lumber in stock. During my daily walks I checked out a number of fences with RV gates and they all used 4×4 posts. My fence and gate are only 4′ tall, and all the ones I looked at were 6′ fences. The moment exerted on my post by a 4′ tall gate should be considerably less than that of a 6′ tall gate so I figured the 4×4 should be plenty strong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My plan was to try to dig as small of a hole as necessary to allow me to bust up the old concrete with a sledgehammer. Even so, any such hole would be far too big for me to fill with concrete, so I picked up a couple of those cardboard tubes and use them as forms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue with the one next to the garage was I’d be limited to working from three sides, as the fourth side is right up against the foundation. The gate post wouldn’t be much easier: clearly, the concrete for the post pre-dated the concrete slab. In neither case would it be a straightforward sledgehammer job. One took me an hour and a half, the other just an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n