Posts Tagged ‘fencing repair’
Wayward Wire
Our fence is pulling an April Fools’ prank on me. One of the plastic pin-lock wire insulators has given up the ghost at a high-stress corner post. That location sees intense UV abuse from the sun and the insulators are going on six-plus years duty. Actually, there are two insulators mounted there, so maybe the one that just failed hasn’t been in use for all six years.
It will be easy to fix by simply swapping the busted one out with an insulator from another post in a position that sees no off-line pressure. The biggest complication is that the insulators are mounted with two different screw heads, so I need to show up with a drill driver and multiple tips to get the job done, as opposed to discovering it unprepared while on a walk with Delilah.
I don’t know why the fence installers didn’t run the wires on the outside of that corner post like they did most everywhere else. Maybe it wouldn’t look perfect because the post wasn’t installed in a precise position to allow the wire to run straight and true. As long as I’m working on it, I should just release one of the ends of all four wires and move the insulators to the outside of the post.
Of course, it’s right by the road so that passers-by get a good view of what looks like a severely neglected fence. A fence in disrepair speaks volumes about a property.
Mine won’t have much time to diss me. The repair is high on today’s list of things that will be receiving attention. Most likely I will go with the quick fix for now. It may not be ideal to make those insulators hold all that tension, but they’ve lasted this long …for the most part. They can survive like that until I become motivated to reroute them for a more permanent solution.
Regardless of whether or not the wires will travel in a perfectly straight line.
Happy April First, 2020!
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Stopping Snapping
To most of you who have known me for a long time, my transition to ranch hand and horse wrangler (I’ll hold off on claiming any prowess with a dog for now) over the last two years may seem a bit surprising.
Personally, I feel a bit more amazed than surprised, partly because it all has come rather easily to me. Yesterday, without a hitch, I breezed through a fence repair that had me marveling over how familiar it seemed, for someone having no fence experience whatsoever a short time ago.
With the temperature swings from hot to cold that we’ve experienced lately, our wire fences are looking a little less taut than usual. After long hours at the (now temporary) day-job, followed by a stop at our health clinic for a pre-international-travel checkup, I stepped out to feed the horses and found a wire tension ratchet arcing.
Snap! Snap! Snap!
I think it bugs the horses, so I try not to neglect tending to these when they begin to arc. Oftentimes, oddly enough, moisture seems to bring it on, but this case was caused when the tension reduced over time and the electrical connection from wire to metal ratchet degraded. That results in arcing with creates a build up of carbon, which then reduces the connection even more.
To fix it, I start by turning off the charger and then loosen the ratchet. That allows me to get access to the place where the coated wire runs through the hole in the ratchet. The original installer saved time by not removing the coating from the wire, but the downside of doing that is the likelihood of future arcing. I strip off the coating altogether, creating a connection that is bare wire to bare metal. Works like a charm.
When I finished yesterday’s repair and turned the charger on again, that junction was completely silent.
It was so quiet that it enabled me to then hear a different spot farther down the line doing a quieter version of the same snapping sound. I decided to wait on that one, since it was out on the hay-field where the horses don’t have access for the time being.
Maybe it will be one of those that goes away on its own.
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Relative Something 