Earth Augers / Post Hole Diggers

[offshoresa65s]

Hi

I am a bit of a Stihl fanboy, I own a Stihl Farm Boss chainsaw and I own a Kombi KM-130R with pole trimmer, whipper snipper and hedge trimmer.

All fairly pricey stuff, but given I don't want frequent breakdowns because I use these tools frequently I've shelled out for reliability.

I need to start making some fences and looked at one of these BT 121 - Professional One-Man Earth Auger (http://www.stihl.com.au/STIHL-Products/Earth-Augers-and-Petrol-Drill/Earth-Augers/2810-1600/BT-121.aspx) $1500 bucks.

Can't help but notice on eBay, Bunnings and general internet sites much cheaper earth augers, for example: https://www.bbta.com.au/products.php?product=BBT-71cc-Post-Hole-Digger $350 bucks.

Has any one had any experience with these cheaper and I assume chinese earth augers?

At these prices is worth the heart ache of tolerating frustrating non-repairable breakdowns, or just bite the bullet and shell out for Stihl quality, bearing in mind I don't have huge amount of fencing to do.

Any opinions welcome.

Cheers

O

love my rural block :-)

[whitewood]

Can't comment on the type of machines your looking at. From my experience fencing is not a long term project and once the fence is built no more post holes are needed. Cheaper may be the better option.

From my experience a good sound fence can be made from 1 wooden post and 2 star pickets per 'panel'. I got a local contractor to supply the posts and drive them in with his equipment. The extra cost of setting them in the ground was not very expensive per post and a lot eassier than doing it even with a post hole digger. I drilled the holes for the wire in the wooden posts myself, strung the wire and drove the star pickets.

Whitewood

[Timless Timber]

Its not that hard with a hand held auger in hard ground to wrench all the muscles in your shoulders and back if the augur gets stuck with say a tree root or packed claypan type ground...

It needs to be pretty easy going and soft ground and not too many post holes... to be worth the trouble - otherwise get a neighbor with a tractor mounted augur to do the holes for you on a contract basis... probably cheaper than the stihl augur which you might not use again.

I don't now how many kilometers - (12?) of 7 ft fencing i put in on my 28 acre deer farm... holes down 4 feet and steel 3 inch galv pipe concreted in... and I dug all the post holes with an old long drop augur - that builders use for digging site toilet long drop holes... the type that compresses the earth centrally into a pot, "T" handled - still available at Bunnings for not a lot of $. Used a crow bar to loosen dirt if it was too tight for the long drop augur to bite into...

Just work on one hole at a time... you get there sooner than you think...

There were two holes I just couldn't get - cap rock... I tried everything levering the rocks out with the tractor (Old TEA 20 Fergusson from WW2) and it was too heavy - would cause the tractor to rear up lifting the front wheels off the ground.:o

An old mate who's a shot firer offered to come down and blow the cap rock for me.

First stick didn't do anything - just blew out the dirt we tamped it in with.

2nd stick the same....

Only had a couple more sticks - so the mate mixed up about 2 kilos of ampho (Ammonium Nitrate) (Urea and diesel) and put that down the hole - then the last 2 sticks of power gel, to set it off.

Well it worked alright....neighbors 12 miles away were ringing plod...reporting the blast!

Never found the cap rock... it disintegrated...

The remaining "hole" was so large and deep it took 2 x 12 tonne truck loads of gravel to back fill it enough that I could dig a hole to set the posts into... :B :D

Your mileage may vary - I don't think you'd be disappointed with the quality of any stihl product - its just whether its worth the outlay for one fence run?.

Maybe you could hire one for a weekend and see what you think of them first?.

Might save you an expensive outlay if it shows up aspects of the equipments performance you hadn't anticipated.

Alternately buy one second hand off gumtree from someone who has no use for it, and save a few pacific peso sheckles. :wink:

Hope that helps.

[Bedford]

There is a discussion here, post hole digger (http://www.renovateforum.com/f216/post-hole-digger-109857/) about them.

[codeMunk3y]

My 2c

We hired a dingo digger on the weekend, came with a bucket and auger; $250 for the weekend and it chewed through our very rocky/clay ground. If you think you can get all the posts done in a weekend, then you could look at that, or see if you can find someone with a tractor and post driver that you could hire/bribe

[offshoresa65s]

Hey everyone

Thanks for your prompt replies.

Thanks Bedford for the useful link re. the Post Hole Digger thread in Renovation forum.

It appears there are some happy punters with the cheaper Chinese stuff, as much as I love Stihl, I just can't justify that kind of money.

I think I'm am going to keep an eye on Gumtree for a second hand one, I should say however I was hoping to take advantage of the wet winter we've had here in the Clare valley and strike while the ground is a little softer.

Cheers

O

[damian]

I had surgery tuesday so I'm still in hospital so this will be quick.

Bought a small chinese off ebay some time back. Really happy. Small is better because doesn't rip your shoulder out. I got it because my block is steep but reckon it better than a big one and cheaper of course. So long as you don't need to do 300 mm holes.

Does in 30 seconds what my old hand auger took 15 minutes to do.

Roots and rocks will stop it dead as with any auger.

Got mine from agr machinery or something. Not always the cheapest but their stuff seems slightly better quality than some.

Good luck.

[Matt_M]

Dad and I hired a post hole auger to put some stumps for retaining edging. We weren't going any deeper then 400mm and found the auger to be hopeless. It was a decent Stihl one too.

Dad is well built and I am not weak, but we both wary of using the thing above idle. The amount of torque the thing had was unreal. We talked about using the thing on full throttle and how dangerous is would be if it went ok for the first few mm then grabbed something hard... Scarey stuff.

Next time I would just use the twins (manual post hole diggers) and a big pry bar. Unless you have a tractor with a rear mount digger I wouldn't bother. That is just my view though.

Ha, even when I hired it out, the guy told me that they should be banned :D

Good luck.