Does Fence Post Foam Really Work?

How about everyone? Joe Everest, the

fence

expert, is coming by today to talk about the expanded aerated concrete he used to install the

fence

post

. Now it's been on the market for a while, but it still hasn't caught on. It's too new today. video let's see the practical uses how it looks how it looks when set up and most importantly it's strong it's strong enough to hold up a fence long term stay tuned as we expand on this week's FAQ question I'm Joe Evers the fence expert. My family has been perfecting their fence building for over 60 years, three generations, although there is more than one way to build a fence.

I am here to share with you our way. we have two fence

post

s that are commonly used when building a wooden fence we have a round steel fence post that is used for a residential chain link and some types of wooden fence but most importantly we have a post of post master steel fence, it's actually my preference to use when building a wood fence because it's designed specifically for wood fencing when the rated load won't warp or rot like a wood post. I'm very excited to see how the

foam

expands around these. I am very interested to see how. it expands inside this post master steel fence post so let's look up the expanding

foam

product we are using sicka's pro select that being said i would expect the process and results to remain the same no matter which brand you choose to expand the foam products come in two parts one part A and one part B the process is to mix the two parts together for about 15 seconds i would cut off the corner and pour it into the hole now here is the problem this moves very fast you only have 15 seconds to mix it up once it goes into the hole you only have ten seconds to make adjustments to the post the important part here is to make sure your post is completely level and in line with where you want it before you that the foam goes into the hole so that we are active I am going to show you two different shots the first is the traditional post in the hole, the foam goes in, the foam fills the hole, the The problem is that they miss the magic that is happening below the level, there is expansion, there is a filler in every corner. and the rift is grabbing the post and we're going to miss all of that so the second shot is going to be on a transparent cube so we can

really

see the magic that's happening underneath so now we have our post level going both ways. what we're going to do is we've got Part A and Part B.

I'm going to roll them up to where I break this barrier, then I have 15 seconds to make sure they get mixed up, so I'm going back and forth, I'm just making sure we get a nice mix here so one thing I notice is you can feel you can feel the heat starting to build here so now we're going to go ahead and cut the corner little pour spout here we're going to pour it in and around making sure we get it all out of the bag thanks of course we poke around to make sure there isn't anywhere in the bottom left that

does

n't have the foam we're going to check our level to make sure our levels are correct and now we are going to wait for the phone to expand, let's see what happens, okay?

So what we're starting to see, we're starting to see a little bit of that chemical reaction, we're obviously seeing a color change, but we're also starting to see an expansion, it's going from a darker green to a lighter green as that is forming that outer skin is actually building your outer wall here and then they'll start to push up even more you're also pushing against the outer edges of, in this case, the bucket, but usually the wall of the hole and

really

forming a tight bond against that post okay so now it's really gaining momentum you know when we started it was less than a half gallon obviously and now we've gotten to a gallon and a half and it really shows no signs of stopping but it's still going. -along just passi With two and a half gallons, you're really moving, so you're pushing yourself up, you're pressing against the post, against the outside walls, you're really filling in each and every nook and cranny , it's grabbing all the surface around it guys this is exciting to watch. it happens the volume of what is being filled is really amazing one thing you guys can't tell i hear is a little stream growing out of the bucket it's putting so much outward pressure it's really putting a lot of stress on the bucket which tells me that it's doing a good job of forcing itself out and like I said just

work

ing around the roots and the rock really coming together, everyone guys looks like we're done with the expansion phase you know it's almost full. this whole 5 gallon bucket which is very interesting to see happen in real time now it's going to spend extra time it's going to take about two hours to fully cure so while it's not expanded it's not done yet it's going to take another couple of hours to really firm up and that's the lift very well before we built a fence in this post so we have the post set up the foam has expanded and the manufacturer recommends allowing at least two hours for this foam to cure, in actually we're going to take a little more time we're going to give it a couple days so we'll meet up in the future and we're back it's been a couple days we wanted to give these posts every We might really get good and firm before we start turning Wade against him and really start testing him, unfortunately, they didn't even get that far.

We should see her this morning. it actually constricts after it expanded we also see that in the five gallon bucket that we showed you earlier the foam on that dollar is very constricted as well let's take a look so what happened is the foam on the pole constricted expanded and filled the hole with in so Point that the last two days is constrained again. What you can see is that this post is very shaky. There is a lot of movement. There's a cavity around it that just isn't filled with anything. see that the post itself has come loose from the foam at the core, which means the foam on the post itself didn't do a great job of expanding the hole and holding it up, it also didn't do a great job of adhering to the post at Yeah.

I just didn't make a good contact you know we can see this much better in the five gallon bucket there is a void around the hole in the post it's actually just big enough to sink my fingers into where the foam on the post had expanded and then you collapsed. I can also see that it also collapsed from the post again. I could stick my finger between the post and the foam on the post over all this foam. I can see it in this other hole as well. When the post foam starts out it keeps the same shape all the way around the post what we can see is that in this hole it started out a little bit smaller but then the post hole got bigger.

I can get my whole hand in the gap between the edge of this hole and the foam it just didn't do a great job of expanding after it came out of the beginning of that hole we can keep seeing it's also cracking around the post it didn't good contact you know again it didn't expand to fill the hole and it did make great contact with the post overall those are two of the main things I look for when looking at how well this poem is doing from the Post in the Hole before I finish Just want to thank our fence who provided both the fence posts and foam material for the posts and also dug the holes for us for testing today.

In conclusion, after this test with this post foam, I have to say that it is not. great idea to use it on your next fence but that is not to say after the announcement further testing with additional manufacturers of foam that the answer

does

n't change but as of today after this testing i have to say using the expanded foam to install your next fence post is not a great idea