3 Tricks To Installing Stronger 4X4 Wood Fence Posts That Last Longer

good morning gardeners and di wires everywhere it's Sunday February 2nd and I've spent the

last

few weekends putting up

wood

en

posts

as part of my massive garden expansion project that I'm completing this winter for the 2020 growing season and today I wanted to give you some tips and

tricks

on how to drive a

wood

en post into the ground to make it

stronger

and

last

longer

and more resistant to rot all the wooden

posts

you see in front of you are 4 inches by 4 inches by 10 feet long posts and they are all pressure treated lumber number 2 which is rated for ground contact any wood post you put in the ground has to be pressure treated and rated for ground contact here you can see the severe weather stamp that is on each of these pressure treated posts and you can clearly see the general purpose ground contact label printed on them while it is absolutely mandatory that you use made ra pressure treated with ground contact rating to set as studs just because it is pressure treated d and rated for ground contact does not mean it will never rot all pressure treated lumber is rot resistant contact rated with pressure treated soil it will just retard rot it will not prevent rot so to retard that rot even further there are some tips and

tricks

you can employ along the way when you are setting up your post to ensure less contact with water and

longer

life for all wood that is installed in the ground the first piece of advice I am going to give you today is how to increase the strength of the wooden posts you are

installing

in the ground now when most people are

installing

posts of wood into the ground, they embed them in concrete and the main point of embedding them in concrete is to add extra strength, but the problem inherent The problem with concrete is that you need something to hold on to to really add strength, so if you just add a wooden post in the ground and pour concrete around it, there aren't good frictional forces between the concrete and the wooden post. wood. and what that means is that the wood stud is smooth, so even and straight that it doesn't have a lot of rough edges for the concrete to grab onto, so what we want to do here is increase the surface area of ​​this wood. post so that there is more surface area for the concrete to adhere to and grip and we also want to make it rougher and less uniform so that there is a better grip where the two frictional forces of the post and the concrete meet so to make this, I took simple three inch wood screws and embed them into the post here and what those wood screws are going to do is create jagged spots with ridges and a lot of friction for the concrete to stick to instead of the concrete just trying to clamp the post those screws will drive into the concrete and add a tremendous layer of strength to your post so right here you can see the wooden post in front of you and this is a 10 foot post. long wooden post and this wooden post s needs to be buried at least 3 feet into the ground so here you see two different markings i made you see a straight line to your right and that's exactly 36 inches that's the line of wooden post burial just to the left. you see a dotted line that is 24 inches away so I have a mark at both 2 feet and 3 feet and what I want to do is put the wood screws within the 2 to 3 foot range because it will be near the top of the concrete and about halfway through concrete so all I did was take 4 3 inch long 10 year warranty coated wood screws and drilled them into the side of the post at about a 30 to 45 degree angle and it is very important that you buy a galvanized or coated wood screw that is made to last at least 10 years because it is going to embed into the concrete and you want the screw to last as long as possible and those screws sticking out of the wood stud will suit you to give that concrete something really good to hold on to and your post is going to be much

stronger

and more resistant to winds and shifting than if you were to just bury that post inside concrete now that we've discussed how i Installing the posts so that they are stronger and more resistant when they are placed in the ground, let's discuss how we can install them in order to increase the resistance to rocks The number one mistake that most people make when installing a wooden post in the ground is they install the hole deep enough for the bottom of the post to rest on the actual ground and this is a problem because the post is in direct contact with the ground, that ground is inherently wet and that moisture will be in contact with the bottom of the pole at all times;

Also, if it gets any kind of rain, the soil can get wetter and wetter. time, this is an extreme problem if you live somewhere that has clay soil because that soil can be wet 365 days a year and because wet clay or moist soil is in contact with the bottom of your wooden posts at all times. It's going to eat away at the base of the post and that rot will slowly travel up the post and rot it at a faster rate, so one way to prevent that is to put down a three to six inch layer of gravel. under each post, so in my case, my holes need to be dug to a minimum depth of 36 inches to fit my post.

I've been digging them 40 inches deep and under each post I put a four inch layer of gravel and right in front of me I have a single 50 pound bag of quikrete multipurpose gravel this is basically crushed bluestone and they sell it at Lowe's or Home Depot for about $4 a bag and each bag I get about two gravel holes when I dig the hole that is eight to twelve inches in diameter to put the post in and what happens is now we're sitting on top of a layer of crushed bluestone the bottom of that post is not in contact with the wet ground if you had a heavy rain event and the ground becomes saturated the soil is going to drain around the wood post and I'm going to drain through of the gravel, so the gravel will always be drier than the surrounding soil, thus adding years to the end of the posts life and slowing down rot by laying a firm, dry base around the post wooden tee the third and last.

The advice I want to give you for installing a wooden post in the ground to increase its longevity and rot resistance is to install the wooden post with a revealing base and this is probably the best advice I am giving you in this video. I have seen several videos on YouTube on how to install a wooden post in the ground and they are all the same for the most part, they all include someone digging a hole and they are either filling the hole with quikrete quick concrete or they are hand mixing concrete and they are pouring the concrete into the hole and then the concrete always ends up on the surface and this is setting you up for a critical failure that the concrete will eventually sink into the ground where the concrete meets the post will be the low point in the ground line and every time it rains the water is going to go where the concrete meets the post and the water is going to intrude in that little little space where the concrete meets the wood and it's going to over time run off and that post is going to rot at a very fast rate so here we have a plain 8 inch Quikrete concrete pipe and these come in different sizes you can get 8 inch 12 inch you can get them in 24 inch as in at 36 inches and what it is is a tube form that you install above the soil line that presses on top of your concrete and allows you to overfill the concrete so that the top of the concrete pad is several inches above above the grade line I recommend at least a three inch revealed base which means the top of this tube should stick out a minimum of three inches above the soil line and what it does is keep water out pool up around the exact point where the concrete meets the wood because I have a three inch reveal on each footing what will happen every time it rains is that the water is going to pull around the concrete, not at the point where the concrete is meets the wood stud using these concrete form tubes its a very simple process you will see every five inch I have a mark all I do is mark every five inch and I also cut a five inch piece das of this concrete form after I put my post I fill it with concrete to the top of the soil line and then I take one of these concrete forms and push them two inches into the concrete so I have a gap of three inches that sticks out above the soil line and I use a level to level it laterally but I leave the back of the footing sloping slightly higher than the front of the footing that way rainwater won't pull the top of the foundation because it will slope and slip.

With these three simple tips and tricks, you can put up a wood post that's stronger and lasts longer, thank you all. so much for watching today's video if you found it helpful please hit the like button and if you haven't subscribed to the channel yet please subscribe for future updates and more videos like these if you are curious about something i use in my garden all i use it's in my amazon storefront linked in the video description thank you all so much for watching and i look forward to seeing each and every one of you in the next video