How to install chain link fence. Propriety of techniques and materials used in chain link fences

There are a variety of

techniques

and

materials

used

in

chain

link

fencing and we will show you two of them in this garden, but before we do that we need to get the posts in these post holes to be 2 feet deep and 6 inches wide at the top. top, but we

used

a hand post hole digger to make them a little wider at the bottom, this means that even if the concrete doesn't go all the way to the frost line, it will still be quite stable. Ground movement in winter will push the foundation and throw the

fence

out of alignment.

We start by placing our corner door and the end posts. The walls of all our poles are point zero six five inches thick. Thinner pole material probably won't be strong. It is enough that these end posts, as they are called, are 2 inches in diameter on the outside and 6 feet long. We positioned the post so that it sticks out about 50 inches from the ground. We hold the post plumb while we pour the concrete around it when the concrete is stiff enough, we make our final adjustments to the post so that it is absolutely vertical in both directions and on this side, boy, we're good, we don't need to do anything, okay, once we have all our terminal posts set up.

We can run a rope between the terminal post to line up all of our line posts. Now it would be nice to attach a rope directly to the terminal post, but we have to wait for the concrete to dry, so instead we'll run the long rope and attach it. to these poles, okay, you have it there, the line should touch the terminal pole on the outside of the far side of the house and we pull this as hard as we can. Now we use this line to set our line posts, the line posts which are the The posts in the middle of the

fence

are 1 in 5 eighths of an inch outside diameter or OD and we set them up a little over 46 inches above soil.

The outer edges of the posts touch the line and, of course, the post must be perfectly plumb. Wire fence posts in both directions are positioned so that they are 10 feet apart or slightly less and the spacing should be uniform along each span of the fence. When placing the posts in concrete, you want to make sure that they are not disturbed. For a couple of days we want to let the concrete fully cure because we put a lot of stress on the post when we stretch the fence fabric. An alternative to placing Polson concrete is to use anchoring devices like these.

This system is called shoe and anchoring system works a lot in concrete using metal stakes we place the terminal post and stretch the line between them. We can do this right away since we don't have to wait for the concrete to cure now we place our front line post. slide a post driver over the top of the post, set the post and tap it two or three times with a driver, the lead weight in the driver pushes the post into the ground, then we check that it is plumb, we continue to drive it two or three times and check for plumb again until the post is in the ground to the proper height or mark we established.

Now we remove some grass from around the base of the post. We don't need much more than six inches of the pole. then we dig out about six inches, this gives us room to place our anchoring device to secure the post, we slide the shoe over the top of the post and stick it into the hole, then we stick these anchor sheets into the ground, we go ahead and we place the line post on this run before tightening the anchors on any of them once our top rails, which we'll talk about later, we can make our final adjustments and tighten the anchors, one of us stands at the end of the fence looking down the line and the other walks along it placing the post plumb from side to side and tightening the shoes once the posts are secured we replace the soil inside around the bases and it is a good idea to water these places quickly so the side lines disappear.

Besides not having to wait for the concrete to dry, the other advantage of anchoring posts this way is that you can set your post to the exact height you need. Now with our concrete post we need to cut the top to the correct height for about four feet tall, the end post needs to be cut to 50 inches above the ground and the line posts need to be cut to 46 inches. We do this with a 2 inch pipe cutter holding the bottom of the post with a pipe wrench to prevent it from spinning in the concrete, okay Joe, okay ready to attach the hardware, yeah let me grab some tension bands here Before we continue, we attach a lot of hardware to the pole and will start by sliding some tension bands over the terminal. post these will attach the fence fabric to the terminal post we use for the tension bands one for each foot of fence height the flat side of the band the side with the bolt head goes on the outside of the fence a band of reinforcement goes on the post top of the tension bands, this looks like a tension band except the fixture is centered on the post, the top rail will attach to this, finally I put a post cap on the top, just The line posts have a fitting like this at the top, this is called a loop cap and the top rail will pass through this.

We placed one of these on each line post in the section and attached the end post fittings to the post at the other end of this run. Now we are ready for the top rail. The top rail forms the top of the frame over which the fence fabric is stretched. Okay, let me put this through the hole here. Specifically, the top rail will keep the end post nice and parallel where weight and tension always want to pull on the top. post together slide street top rail is a thinner 3/8 inch outside diameter tube one rail end fitting goes over the end of the first piece and is bolted to the support band attach the support band two inches below the top of the terminal post and tighten the nut the top rail ends are joined using an outer sleeve also make sure the rails are tight in the sleeves and rail end fittings make sure the The loop on the top of the loop faces out of the house.

The fence goes on the outside of the posts and the top rail should also be on that side of the post. You will almost always have to cut the last piece of top rail to the proper length with a few twists with the pipe cutter. Make sure the last piece is long enough to go past the first post of the line and at this end we have another rail end fitting that connects to the reinforcing band here. Yes, I think you're right, we are using nine gauge aluminum siding. wire here, this is kind of heavy, so it should last a long time.

Now notice that we are rolling this on the outside of the fence, on the side away from the house or on the side facing your neighbors, a little short, yes, but just for shopping. 80 feet or so isn't bad, but seriously, fence fabric comes in rolls that are 50 feet long, so if you have a fence that is longer than that, you need to intertwine the two rolls. This place where two cables hook together is called the knuckle. you have to bend to open the knuckle until the last strand of wire is free and you open the top and bottom knuckles with the wire free at both ends, you twist it out of the fence with a sort of corkscrew action, now some fence manufacturers We'll put a loose strand of wire on the roll so you don't have to unweave a strand now.

We will use this thread to attach this first fence piece to the second fence piece, but keep in mind that you may have to take out two. Of these, in order for the threads to match, the threads are twisted two different ways at the top and bottom and have to alternate to interlock, so the two ends you are trying to join together must twist the same way as the thread. What do you knit? between them it will go in the opposite direction and will keep them alternating every two threads. Simply thread the loose thread down, it hooks through both pieces and becomes the thread that joins the two sections together with this 9 gauge wire.

This is pretty sturdy because the wire is so stiff once the pieces are attached you have to close your knuckles a pair of pliers will do for this you have to do it at the top and bottom of the seam and pretty soon you can't see where the pieces are They have already been joined together now let's let our fabrics last long enough we can start to attach them to the frame. We're going to start down here where we start to spread out the fabric using a short metal bar like this one called a tension bar, which we're going to attach the fabric to.

At the end of the frame the tension bar slides through the last strand of the fence, then we pull the end towards the post and slide the bolts through the tension bands and around the tension bar, carriage bolts They fit through the tension bands and hold the tension bar. Using a ratchet here, we space the tension bands evenly on the post, which here means about every 15 inches. Now we temporarily tie the top of the fabric to the top rail. We will use these wire ties later to tie the fabric securely to the frame, but for now.

We use just enough to keep the fence from falling over and tie them loose enough so the fence can slide along the top rail. The next thing we do is what we call stretching the wire, what this means is stretching the mesh from the first post by applying the correct pressure and fixing it to this post and we will stretch it by applying as much pressure as we can with our hand. I think that's all. Now we slide another tension bar a little further down the post. This is only temporary. It gives us a place to put a winch of some kind.

We hook one end of this winch to the end post and the other to the tension bar. Now we start pulling. Okay, Dean, that looks good. You will know when the tension is correct. When the fence sticks out about a half inch above the top rail, we give the winch one or two more pulls to compensate for the fabric between the end of the winch and the post that is not being stretched. Now we separate the fabric. so that it ends right on the post, all this means is that we have to open a knuckle at the top and bottom and corkscrew the cable out, let me take this tension bar and then we slide another tension bar on the end of the fabric. and we attached it to the tension bands and finally we released the winch and let the fence be level in its tension to keep the fence so we tied it on the top rail and to all the line posts these short pieces of aluminum are designed to hook. around the fence on one side, go over the top rail and tie them to themselves, you need a good pair of pliers, one where the teeth and jaws are still sharp, don't use a boring old pair that has been rusting on the basement for years.

In addition to placing ties about every 18 inches along the top of the fence, we placed four ties on each line post when we

install

ed our post, we were very careful with our gate posts, these have to be absolutely plumb and space for a door is crucial. For a 36 inch door like this we left exactly 39 inches between the inside of the door post just to have enough room for the door hardware. The hardware consists of two male hinges that we fix to a post. A carriage bolt secures them firmly. and always hang the top hinge so that it points downwards, this will prevent the door from lifting.

The other part of each hinge is loosely attached to the door. The door itself is a prefabricated unit. Now that we have placed the door in place and aligned it. We think it looks best at the top of the gate, level with the top of the fence on each side, so when you attach the posts you may want to choose them a little higher if that means your gate can swing a little more freely once the door is in place, we tighten the hinges and finally put the latch mechanism in place. When you have a passage door, you need to divide it into two sections.

The clearance between our two posts is 10 feet and the gate sections are each 57 inches wide. Joanne Place a piece of top rail on the floor this way our drop bar slides down into the bar and holds the door securely.