Post Hole Digger Showdown!

Alright, so today I'm here looking at different

post

hole

s in different ways. It's a kind of experiment. I'm not going to put up a fence or a platform or anything like that, but what I'm doing is comparing four different tools and methods for digging. a

post

hole

for two foot deep holes which is like a standard depth around here and while I'm doing that I'm just going to compare them in terms of ease of digging, quality of all the time it takes things like that and in the end, you should have a good idea of ​​how you want to dig your next hole, so I prepared my four tools for this test first.

The most primitive, old-school approach is to use a narrow, long-bladed shovel. This is my tried and true old Post Hole Digger. I've dug too many holes with this thing. This is a spin here. A straight auger. A manual auger. And then I have the electric auger. This guy is eight inches tall. I think my hand auger measures a six inch hole, this makes about a six inch hole and then you'll see how it turns out. It depends on the soil. You can definitely dig a hole with one of these guys, no doubt, especially if your soil is not too rocky or hard, but that's true with all of these tools, each of these guys, when faced with very hard rocky soil, becomes a challenge, so the great thing about this shovel and you can see it here is that you actually need big old chunks at a time, if the soil is kind of soft and moist, you can get four or five inches into the hole with each cut and that's different than these other tools that cut the hole and work. more progressively and slowly to make the shovel great that way, a couple more advantages, cheap, if you don't find this stuff second hand, you buy it new, you will probably spend between 20 and 30 dollars, it will also last you forever, no there is maintenance. a tool like this, throw it in the truck, leave it in the shed, whatever, if you want to sharpen it good, if you want to get the rust off, but it will probably last you a lifetime, another is that it's versatile. actually the only tool of the bunch that you can do more than just dig holes with, so if you're not looking to fill your house or your shed or truck or whatever with a million tools, if you're looking for a tool that can do multiple things and maybe you don't have many post holes to dig, this is a good idea, you know, dig the post holes, you'll be done and then you can use this shovel for something else right now in terms of the force needed to use it.

I think anyone who can use a shovel can dig a hole with one of these guys. Well, what is the main drawback? I must say that this is not the best tool for digging post holes, in fact it might be the worst of these. tools for digging post holes and the main negatives are two: firstly, once you have all that dirt in the hole, you can't shovel it out, so you have to use a post hole

digger

, a shovel or your hand or something and once you go down more than two or three feet you just won't even be able to reach it, so it has that flaw, the other one is that when you're digging the hole, the deeper the hole gets, the less influence you have. with the tool because you can't pull it back like you traditionally would with the shovel, so it sucks.

I'm not going to lie it sucks but it gets the job done and also the time spent digging this hole compared to the other tools were the longest I think that's it yeah okay so here's our extreme close up of hole number one. See, it's up to the two-foot mark here at ground level and there's actually a lot of room in that hole for concrete. So if you're going to pour concrete, you're going to have a good, I don't know, two, three inches on each side and the hole itself is pretty straight. You are definitely bored in this post in different ways.

This is a four by four. If you're going to put in a six-by-six, you definitely have to dig a bigger hole. Next is my post hole

digger

. This is a classic tool. This is the group's tool named after the post digging activity. holes like this is just a classic and a lot of people try to reboot the post hole digger and add little frills and little mechanisms to change it, but this is a classic post hole digger, it's just two blades, two sticks, throw it towards down and hold your ground. Take it out and repeat it to do the job and unlike these other tools, it always gets the job done.

Basically, there are few conditions that will make it impossible to dig a post hole with a post hole digger. It sure is rock solid. Okay, you're not going to do it. go through it, but other than that, if you have gravel, you have some rocks, you have some roots, you can go through it with the post hole digger as it will do the job as far as ease of doing the job, the first hole is not really It's that, but after that, it's just with this tool that we're going to bust you because you have to dig 20 holes, you're not going to go out and dig 20 holes with the post hole digger, at least I'm not.

Do it that way, I'll dig a couple and then do something else that will dig a couple more. It doesn't have much weight so if you drop it and try to let the tool do the work. Unless you're digging in the sand, it's not going to do the job, you have to get your shoulders and your body into it to actually dig a hole, so it takes some energy and bigger people, people with more mass tend to gravitate towards the post hole. Bigger now in terms of cost, cheap, you can get these guys second hand. I actually bought this one secondhand maybe 15 years ago for ten bucks and it's still very low maintenance.

I'm sure there are people sharpening their post diggers. and grease the handles and that kind of stuff, but you don't really need to do that. I've had to replace the bolt that holds the two pieces together from time to time, so I'm a fan of the post hole digger, it really does that. get the job done, it's really versatile and you'll see that the time spent on the post hole digger wasn't too bad, okay post two goes in oh ok extreme close up on post number two it'll end up a little deeper . it just went a little too far, you can see it has a good amount of space around it as well, a couple of inches on each side, it looks like I put this hole in a bit of an uneven spot, one of the things you can do when you're working with A post hole digger is like going around the hole and making circles to get a straighter hole, but otherwise it's not too bad, especially if you like that kind of tight fit, not too concrete, the hand auger, this is it. a great tool, it has a It has a long history and you can get old augers second hand, like on eBay or at estate sales or whatever, and they are heavier than this one.

This is a Seymour and like most things, the metals are a little thinner today than they used to be. The thing about this tool is that I would say it's probably the easiest to use because you can just slowly turn your hole and make it work or you can put a lot of weight and a lot of force and do it faster, so it's Kind of variable in that regard, but I think if you're looking for an easy way to dig a post hole and your soil isn't too rocky, get a hand auger. They are pretty good tools if it's rocky or you have roots, forget it, you just won't be able to get over it.

This is not a tool for eating roots or cutting through rocks, it just doesn't go anywhere on the bottom. ground when you hit something hard and I have to say that I actually tend to use all of these tools together or in combination, so I'll use one and then I'll hit a rock and then I'll switch to another one, okay? In terms of cost, these new guys will cost you between fifty and a hundred dollars, you know, all things have different prices on Amazon and eBay and all that, last time I checked, these things were sold out on Amazon, I don't know what it is .

Well, it's like a race for the hand augers. There is quite a bit of versatility built into a manual auger. I'm using it here for post holes, but it's possible to use some hand augers to dig a hole and in that case you just keep putting extensions on it and you keep going deeper and deeper, so it's great that way, however, keep in mind that Every time you fill the head of the auger you have to throw it away, it's not like the soil is going to start vomiting. At the top of the hole you will eventually have to remove the dirt in terms of maintenance.

It's like a post hole digger. You can sharpen it, you can paint it to keep the rest away or you can just beat it. and it'll still work it's just an iron tool with a wooden handle there's really not much that can go wrong with this guy and you'll see in terms of time that in this test it actually went toe to toe with the post hole digger, yeah, I think that's on the hand auger, oh I did it right, three holes down on the next hole, power auger like any other power tool, chainsaw, whatever. I always give this guy just a little bit of warm up time okay the last step is the super trendy right now the endless power and I only say trendy because I've been in a couple of jobs I've been in you know , someone pulls one of these out of the truck and everyone's like oh wow I'm so glad you have the power auger you really saved our butts but I just have to tell you I'm a little torn about the power auger because it's not perfect I wanted that it was perfect, you know, I threw it away, I think it was like 250 or 300 dollars for this. tool and that was before I started getting different pieces, you know, you can get a 4 inch or 2 inch anyway.

I expected this guy to be perfect like you know you're turned on you can just dig a hole in anything but it's really not like that. Hit a rock or a root and this thing will stop in its tracks and twist your arms and legs almost as if it were difficult to use this tool. It's not as easy as I thought it would be like it would hit you if you did it. I'm digging those dozen or two dozen or three dozen holes and a lot of times I need to put this tool aside and get out my post hole digger or my rock bar just to get through roots and rocks and stuff so it doesn't dig out.

Any hole is not that difficult, but there are many positive aspects, such as I am happy to have this tool. Number one is that you can dig 20 holes in a morning or in half a day, it's fast, you'll see. the time in this hole is very fast, you know, this is a gasoline engine, so, like everyone else, you own your chainsaws and lawnmowers and all that kind of stuff, it's maintained, there's a schedule maintenance, well, I have not had any problem with this endless earthquake is in the first season of use. I have only been using this this year and I know that at the end of the year I will clean it, repair it and maintain it.

If you don't, it probably won't last as long. The fourth hole is below and you can see that my auger, as I said at the beginning, has an eighth of an inch bit on that type, so you'll have a much larger hole. You can buy these augers. This is one of those types of earthquakes. You can buy smaller pieces from them. You can get a six-inch depth and four inches from a two-inch depth that makes like steel posts. The advantage of the large hole is that you get more concrete, but. That's also like the negative in the hole, you end up with more concrete, so it depends on what you're looking for.

If you want a really solid poured concrete post, this is always pretty impressive just because it's a larger hole. At the end of my test, I got my four holes and the tool on each hole before giving you my final opinion on those four holes. Let me point out that I almost always take one of these guys with me if I'm digging. post holes, this is a big old rock bar, six feet over six feet tall, solid steel rock bar, thing that Pye weighs 20 pounds and the reason I mention this is that all of these methods to Digging holes have limitations when you hit rocks in really, really hard terrain.

In particular, the power auger just can't do anything with very compacted clay or stones or roots or whatever. I find that if I use the power auger I almost always have to go in and start cutting with this bad boy, so if you are going to dig a lot of holes, bring one of these guys with you, I hope you don't have to use it because it is an amazing tool that It has to balance in a lot of holes, it's very heavy, but that's the only thing. I've actually found that this will cut almost anything better than a photo because it will be so much deeper, so final thoughts on these four tools may sound a bit like a cop-out, but I have to be honest.

There is a place for each of these types, the one I use the least, is almost never the shovel, it is effective, but I think the post hole digger is more effective, so if I am going to use the basic hand tool for digging. my holes will be these two types, the auger is really amazing even in soft digable soil,it's just a good tool for you, you know, kind of deliberate and plotting a really good tool for digging post holes is going to beat you up a little bit. more because you're swinging it, but that thing cuts roots, rips up rocks and that kind of stuff, so I think the post hole digger is probably the one most versatile hole-digging tool this guy will ever have.

Hole dug, while all of these have limitations, tomorrow I'll build the fence for someone and bring this guy in. I'm going to bring this guy in with some backup, but I hope to dig every one of the 20 studs with this. guy just because it's faster and a lot easier It's still an exercise but I think it works a little better and plus you end up with this big old hole which I like because it means I could put more concrete in the hole and I end up with a stiffer post and Just admit it, if you look at these four holes, one of them doesn't look like the other, this power auger makes a mess, it blows stuff around your hole that you have to clean, while these guys, they all can hold the dirt, you can put it in. on a tarp or piece of cardboard, cut it up if you need to move it off site or if you are going to put it back in your hole, if you are not sinking concrete you can bring it back to the hole this way.

Dude, you know, it just makes a mess. I guess as an earthquake it's quite appropriate. Well, thanks for watching this comparison of digging a post hole different ways. I almost feel like I need to build a little fence right now. little mini close I have those four holes, but I think I'll refill them anyway. Hit me up with the comment below if you have a comment or a story or a B for a question or anything I like. responding to comments on YouTube. I also have Amazon Associate Links below for some of these tools. If you buy one of those people, I'll get like point zero zero zero nine five cents so I can buy more tools to dig holes. thanks for watching and see you in the next video