How To Install Chain Link Fence The Easy Way

We're going to talk about this one, the star of the show, the

link

in the

chain

, but not yet, we're going to talk about the posts and how far they should go, where they should have them, and where they should have that terminal post. What is a terminal post? A terminal pole is a pole larger than your standard line pole and sees these things like gates ending at corners and endings next to the house. Now the question is spacing, how far apart is the typical spacing? 10 feet, nothing more than 10 feet, so if you have a 14 foot spacing, you're going to use three posts, you're going to use one line end post and one end post.

Now don't forget that your ends are bigger than your line post, let me show you. This is a one and 5/8 inch line post. The caliber is very, very small. It's a 0065, which is a residential caliber. You can use it as a line post. This one here is a little bigger. This is a one and 7/8 inch post. It is also 065 gauge, you can use this as a terminal post. Normally what we do is we use this as a line post and we'll use this as a terminal post. Now this post here is post 2 and 38, all these posts.

They are exterior dimensions, not ID, they are OD. Please note that your Eng 7/8 post should not be used for a door that you want to widen 202 and 38 here in our company we have different standards, we do not use inches and 58 for a post, our smallest line post is one inch and 7/8 and our terminal post for our terminals and for our gate post are 2 and 38. We just want to build a little more robust

fence

and have a more resistant product in In the end we already have two posts in the ground, we have 1 2 and 38 and another 2 and 38 there so this is 14 feet 3 inches inside to inside so we're going to want another post there at 7 FT 1 1/2 that's my center we're using marking paint to mark where we want to put up our post, that brings me to another thing that you should first keep in mind before you start your fencing project, you're going to want to call.

Call 811 and locate what they are going to go out and do is locate all the utilities that run through your yard because the last thing you want to do is make your

fence

more expensive because you accidentally hit a pole through a fiber. optical line a cable line telephone line the opportunities to hit something are endless, make sure you put up some white flags or get some white marking paint and put some dashes on the ground so that way you can mark the utilities in those areas. we're going to get out of the rope, you're going to set up a line of rope from one end to the other, no matter how far apart they are, so that from one end to the other in a straight line when we go to set up our post.

I'm going to offset the rope a little bit because I want this post to be in the center of these two larger posts, so we want to be off the rope by a quarter of an inch, the 2T level will help you accomplish this whole task, so Obviously we have to get these poles into the ground somehow you can put them in concrete by digging a hole or you can hit them today we're going to hit them so we're done driving now we land on a rock and we know. That's because we started going a little crooked, what we ended up doing was bending the pole back into place, which is fine.

Normally we would go a little further, but we are about 34 inches off the ground, which is good. That's enough for us, let's go ahead and cut off the top. Let's keep this really simple. How much post do you need off the ground? 45 inches off the ground minimum, but be careful when measuring from the ground because sometimes. the ground will have humps or if you don't compensate for that hump and your fence doesn't go over the hump you're going to have to go over the hump you're going to have to make a trench for your fence to get in there let's give ourselves a little protection and let's move on and let's go 46 right now, that will give us about 1 inch of space between the ground and the bottom of the

chain

link

.

So we're going to go ahead and put a mark at 46 inches and then we're going to add 4 inches to that 46 inches, which will bring us to 50. Now these two marks are important. This mark is mark 46. marking the top of the line post, that is the height that the top of our line post should be, but since this is a terminal post, we need those additional 4 so that from that way we can finish that top rail because the top rail sits on top. from the post, so we need to have a little extra meeting here of some terminals so we can finish that rail to remember we're going to put a c c to cut, don't put a c on that first mark, come on.

To do the exact same thing in this post, then we're going to Mark at 46, we're going to cut right below that ring, we're going to go ahead and move our string from the bottom up. put the rope on that first mark at 46. What we want to do is make sure we have 46 inches underneath from the rope to the ground, we want to make sure that chain link is cleared and then we're not going to have to dig that in. soil. We're 45 and 7/8, so we're good now. If I didn't have that, what we would want to do is put up one of these. two ends or maybe we would want to lift both or if it's just a small hump, you might want to dig that hump and trench that chain link depending on how deep it goes.

I'm talking like a hump. like maybe this big we're going to go ahead and grab our marker, you're just going to want to mark where that rope hit that post, okay, now we can put the rope down, it's time to start on the fence frame. The first piece of the frame will be the top rail, we will use an inch and 7/8 by inch and a 38 loop cap, continue like this now, if you look at it, it has an original shape, there is a reason why the offset The side that The closest to the face of the pole will be the fabric side.

Now we need to go ahead and prepare for the top rail and tension cable. These things here are called reinforcement bands, they're nice and thick. They are removed from the center of the post. We should not be confused with this. This is a tension band. This comes off the face of a pole. This one comes off the center of the post. A tension band is used to hold the chain. link, so we're not ready for that yet, we go back to the support band, this comes out of the center. We are going to place two support bands per post, we are going to place one at the bottom for the tension cable. and we're going to put one on the top to receive the ends of the top rail now what we're going to need is we're going to need some 5/16 inch galvanized nuts and bolts and a little bit of qu why do you want? galvanized you ask because you don't want it to rest this is a 38 engine aluminum rail this is where the top rail will land so if this was going to be a corner and we had to finish the top rail right here and we had a top rail finished right here, our support bands would stack up, so what we have to do is the lower one has to go up like this and the upper one has to rotate so that it goes down.

The offset allows the support bands to overlap. each other and then sit level, now another tricky part which way the nuts and bolts go, the head of the bolt should be facing the unsecured side, so outside your yard right now I'm just putting a nut and bolt on through the bottom, which is going to be for our guy wire and then we're going to put the end of the rail on just like that and the bolts and the nuts are facing me, the bolt heads are facing out because I'm on the inside, let's do this exact step on the other post, we had to cut it and half it in swi because it didn't fit in my car, okay, so the line that we put on the post starts from the bottom line that is going to mark the bottom of the top rail, so we want the bottom of the top rail to end on that line, so my pipe is socketed, which means this is a male, my other piece of pipe will be a female and it will slide. each other from the post to this line on the top rail.

I'm 53 1/2 inches so the question is how much does this take up from the post to the back of the rail end? I have an inch and A2, so we need to take an inch and 1/2 from 53 and 1/2, which will leave us with 52 now, if we mess up our measurement, we can cut it one more time, we're going to slide this in and then we're going Go ahead and place this at the same point, right at the end of that line, now for the guy wire, what is the guy wire? It is necessary? If you've ever seen a chain link and it curved nicely, what happened?

It's been kicked so many times, that's what the tension cable does, it holds the bottom of the chain link tight. We are going to use 12 and 1/2 gauge two strand stranded wire, this will also go on the chain link. To do it right, it must come before the chain link. Some people just take this and wrap it around the pole and then tie a knot in it and then improvise that way. We don't do that because we think it looks ugly and is wrong, it's much easier to just buy the extra reinforcing band and finish the tension wire that way so everything looks nice and clean.

Now I'm going to use my nippet to go ahead and cut it if you're looking for something with A very sharp blade and some longer handles will probably be the preferred tool that you'll be looking for to cut this type of thing. This is a really good bolt cutter and will also cut n gauge chains. link very easily another good brand of pliers are the Clim pliers. We're going to want this about 3 inches off the ground. Here I'm using the Clim pliers and again we're looking for about that 3 inch mark. This is what we call our tea. handle, we're actually going to use this to tighten the cable, but you have to be careful not to break it.

There's a break point right there, it's pretty nice and tight, so we're going to unroll it and then tie it back to itself. You can also use a chain strainer, anything that's going to grab the wire, pull it up and then suck it all the way in like you did on the other side, so now let's cover the steps we've done so far, we've got our pole driven. we have our top rail on our loop cap on our tension wire now it's time to put things up to

install

the fabric what we're going to need are these things called tension bars that we're going to need. one in that terminal post we're going to need one in that terminal post now we need to place our tension bands we're going to put four here and four there some of you can get away with three now we use sport It's time for the exciting part: the chain link operation now, so everyone knows the standard is 50 to 50 feet per roll, so if it's new it's 50 feet, this is a 4812, it's 11 gauge wire, it's a 2-in diamond and it's 48 tall, we'll unroll it and try to hold it up as best as possible to make it easier to work with.

This is where you're going to need some bolt cutters or some heavier cutting pliers or whatever you have, we're going to cut that tab off, we're going to bend it down so it looks a little cleaner, we're going to insert our bar of tension on the first straw, the first tension band should be as close as possible. the top rail as possible so we're going to go on that second Diamond down throughout this process you'll hear me call them diamonds this is a diamond now before we do anything else I'm going to go ahead and set the height what we want is this knuckle, the center point of that diamond, we want to go to the center of that top rail, so we're going to go one, two, three and four, so we're going to put a tension band on the fourth diamond.

I could do three tension bands, but usually what you see is an arc from the pole here and an arc from the pole here because it's a very long span without a tension band, go another four and continue with the last four that are going to put We're right on top of that tension wire and that side is ready. Now we're figuring out where to cut the link in the chain. I'm going to pull on it a little bit and I can see that I can almost get this link to the post, but I can't quite figure it out, so if I do that I think it's going to give us a lot of tension, don't stretch it too much because you're going to start collapsing these diamonds. and to shrink them, so that your fabric is not going to shrink.

It's almost that tall already, it will start to reduce in height if you tighten it too much, so what I did was cut this just like we did at the beginning. I'm going to save this link and I'm going to remove it. now i can unscrew it now you have one straw left since i cut the bottom straw off we are going to bend it and throw it away so let's talk about some stretching tips before we start stretching what you could do is you could have another tension bar and you could put it so you could have the one here still and you could have one back here and you could run two or two or three ratchet straps, wrap it around the post up to that tension bar stretching it.

That way, another stretching method we use is called chain link raking, this would become our point ofstretch to which we would anchor. Some solid piece, maybe a truck or a tree, pull the chain link, stretch it and then we can still finish it in this post. and we would use this on runs longer than 100 feet. You can make them yourself to see how effective it is. Watch the video in the corner. Today's method we are going to use bear holds. A bear hold is where you actually hold a bear. It's a joke. They're two and 3/8 bear grips, so what they're designed for is we're going to take this piece here and hook it onto that tension bar and then take this other leg, put it around the pole and then pull that . handle what's going toIf this happens, as it goes, it's going to stretch the chain link and again you have to make sure it's at the right height and I just want to put one in there, don't suck it all the way in and now I'm going to To put that second bear position, if I take my hands and put them on a diamond and squeeze it, I can get a little bit of I can relax a little bit there, but I can't get a ton, that's perfect.

Alright, now it's time to tie, so I'm going to use a dressing tool and I'm going to push it down and it's going to lift that fabric up so I can tie the pole. I'm going to show you the old school way and then the new way, so these are aluminum cable ties. We're going to clip them here, near the top of the poster, came Cam and the top rail that we're going to go around and it's aluminum, so look how

easy

. I'm going to bend it with my fingers, now we're going to go back to that hook, we're going to wrap it around.

The unfortunate thing about these ties is that what can happen is that they can be untied, as you can see, that's already kind. from trying to untie just a little bit right there one two three yes four right there now that the post is tied one thing we want to do is address the chain link We want to make sure that it flows well, which I mean That's why it's here, make sure it flows really well with that top rail. If you have a lot of waves, we call it like the back of a dinosaur. You want to try to get it out as much as possible every nine one two 3 4 5. 6 7 8 9 we're going to hook the wrap back and since that's a top rail you want to try to get the tail pointing back in that direction so no one gets caught with it 5 6 7 8 n so that's tying with straight ties let me show you a better way these are

easy

ties we're going to take them out we're going to put one right there five six 7 8 n four five 6 7 8 n let's go back to the middle and go right there, we're going to put two more on our pole and one there, this useful old thing is a tying tool, we're going to put the tie tails on this tool and the drill is going to twist it and twist it and then trim The tails.

These are 11 gauge zip ties and will not unravel like you saw the aluminum zip ties placed there, pull the trigger, make sure the kids around you get them back on that chain link fence. just a little bit so that that way no one can hit the kids and stuff. Two more steps and this chain link fence will be finished. We are going to tie the tension cable to the chain link we want. hog ring right there, we don't want a hog ring all the way in because what could happen is the knuckles on the chain link can go down and then the guy wire comes out, so we're going to grab the ring right there. right there, so now when we kick that fence, that wire goes with it, so the wire holds the bottom of that chain link in the last step, just the caps that we have to put on, they're aluminum, Try to make it nice and level.

Don't be out there with a sledgehammer, you'll break the lid and destroy it to pieces. All you have to do after this is give yourself a pat on the back, so here's how to

install

a residential 4T. super easy grade wire fence but we didn't show you how to install a gate so be sure to watch this video right here so you can learn how to install the gate along with the dan fence with swi we are yming spence company and you have a good day