If you have a fence, you’ll know just how important it is to keep it well maintained, whether it’s wood, metal or concrete, the elements will always take their toll eventually. There are many things that can damage your fence, especially if it’s of the wooden variety, so it’s a good idea to implement tactics that ensure your fence is always in good shape, particularly during winter. Winter is the time of year that your fence can get easily damaged by frosts, and once the cold weather passes you may notice that your fence posts hasve moved around and no longer in their original position. Worse still your fence may be leaning or parts of it may have even snapped off. All of this trauma cis often a result of frost heaving the concrete located beneath your post, which in turn damages your fence. The great news is that you don’t have to hire someone to fix this, you can easily fix heaved fence posts on your own, with a bit of assistance from a shovel and a sledge hammer.
- First of all, you’ll need to detach the section of fence from the post. If you have a wooden fence this will be easy. You only need to remove the nails or screws from top to bottom. If it’s screwed, this will be much easier for you. The detaching of the adjoining sections shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.
- Once you have removed the section of fence, the next step will be to take out the fence post and concrete. Here’s where you’ll need to use the sledgehammer, so it’s important to get kitted out with all the necessary safety gear, most importantly safety glasses. With the sledgehammer smash the old concrete into managable pieces that you can easily remove for disposal. If you find it easier to buy a new post rather than try to avoid damaging it during this process, then you should aim to do so. You may also need to buy a replacement post as it might need to be longer to compensate for the new deeper hole that it will be set into.
- After removing the fence post, you will need to remove all debris from the hole, plus you’ll need to make it deeper so as to get below the frost line that caused the problem in the first place. After making the whole deeper, you will need to clean it out ready to be refilled with concrete and a replacement post.
- Whether you’re reusing the old one or have bought a new post, set it into the hole – ensuring that it’s level with the aid of a spirit level or plumb line, and you should also use some means to make sure it sits in line with the other fence posts. You’ll then need to fill the hole with a quick-setting concrete. Quick setting concrete will allow you to get back your fence up as fast as possible.
