My back yard fence was first built in 1978 I assume because the house was built in 1978. I have no evidence of this except the artifacts I dig up in the process of renewing the fence. And it not like I find dated materials but I find things like soda can pull tabs, and glass coke bottles. When I was cleaning out the shrubbery in front I found a very old schnaps bottle. What I am getting to is the tasks that I am doing now. Replacing rotten fence posts. In this case I have to excavate the post stump. I can't get a grip on the post or the slug, so I literally dig the thing up.
These posts were planted at a 2 foot depth. The photo above shows the mostly excavated hole with the remainder of the slug at the bottom. I'm using a two pronged approach where I breaking up the slug with a hard chisel, and then dig around the circumference as needed. I really don't like to do this because it breaks up the ground around the new slug, but we can work around this. The post hole I am working on now is between the nursery pots below.
In order to dig out this one hole I had to disassemble two fence panels. One was already reworked, and the other is the old fence. The post in question is the post that joins the two panels. For this design it is the point where the fence in switching from outer bones to inner bones where east side fence starts. The fence to the north is the outer facia towards the alley, and the east side faces the neighbors yard. So I am going to orient the "pretty" part of the fence toward my garden.
After I have finished excavating all the old post slug I have a post hole that is around 12 inches in diameter and 24 inches deep. This is a lot bigger than my usual post hole. So I want to fill up the extra space so that I don't fill such a large hole with concrete. It is not hard to do, just fill it with concrete. But I want to make consistent post holes, and slugs just for the design integrity, and also in anticipation of the future. Some day I may want to dig up this post, and put something else here. I'm gonna make it easier on my future self an put a reasonably sized slug here. Part of the resizing the post hole process is filling the bottom of the post hole with gravel. I want a 18 inch deep post slug.
Now I have reduced the length of the post hole, and now we need to reduce the diameter of the post hole. The companies that make concrete also make products to help you use concrete. So, above is a concrete form which will help me make a nice uniform post slug. I have reassembled the reworked fence to the north which will hold the new post in this hole. At this point the post hole is finished, the concrete form is positioned, and the post is positioned. But in order to pour concrete into the form we have to do one more thing, back fill the post hole.
The concrete form is cardboard, and relatively light weight. If I tried to pour concrete directly into it then it would just get knocked over. I need to hold it in place to pour concrete into it. So we are going to back fill the remainder of the hole with the clay soil that came out of the hole. Again, because of the light weight nature of the concrete form, we have to back fill the hole in a uniform, and calculated way. We want the post slug to be generally coaxial with the post, and keep this in mind when back filling the post hole. I crumble the clay soil into small pieces to evenly distribute them, During the fill I do some light packing of the back fill. But don't pack it too much so as to deform the concrete form.
The very last step in reworking this post is to add Mr. Concreto... I like that the concrete form gives the post slug a uniform look. You can even float the top of the post slug to make it look extra fancy, like it's finished or something... Just one little note about the old rotten post, I'm trying to prevent that in the future. After repairing the irrigation leak I think this section will do much better. But, also, as general rot prevention I have used treated wood that is rated for ground contact and also a surface coating. The rot starts at the surface, so stop it there...
Now that the rotten post has been replaced we can put the fence back together so the yard is safe for puppies. The fence panel on the left has been reworked. The fence panel on the right in the one that is under construction. The post I replaced this time was the one that joins these two panels. Going up the east side of the fence to the right, south, there are several more post slugs that need to be reworked in this manner. I'm glad this is fun for me, otherwise it might seem like work...
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