Thread: Rotten rotted post!

hmm, drill the old crap out of the old post, dig the rest out and re-seat the new post?


Tiger, I'm very interested in your experience as we have a fence post that seems to have lost some vertical "strength" in the past 3 months.

cheers
Wendy

Face the fact that you are going to have to dig a hole in order to concrete the new post in propery and cease with trying to chip out the old one and just dig it out. If it has a concrete path or something around it cut a nice 300 x 300 hole in the concrete, smash that out then dig. When you concrete the new one in fill it right to the old path level and finish it to match.

Dig the soil concrete surrounding it out with a crowbar and lever the remains out

Wendy, I have tried to drill through. Doesn't help much. This redgum is fierce. Burnsy, it's a small property didn't want to cut more concrete away and it's on clay so it all means more digging. Isn't there a tool I could use to make it all a bit easier . Probably going to enconter this again at some stage and I'd like to quickly get the post out.

There is no easy way to remove it.

You probably right Bob, but I can't imagine professionals using up that much time, surely a jackhammer would make short work of it?

I would agree there is no easy way, a jackhammer will not work on wood, the only mechanical way would be a large auger bit and vacum out the swerf. As an ex-landscaping professional I would give you a 95% chance of becoming frustrated with that and having to resort to my earlier method.

As a side, this was always one of the pains of working in the industry, people look at a job like that and think it can be that much effort how can it be worth that much in labour.

Example, I own a jackhammer and a quickcut and a concrete mixer so would allow 2 hours (might do it in one but I never take the risk) to replace the post plus tool wear therefore around $200. Do it yourself options are 1. without the right tools, could take all day, what is your time worth? Option 2. hire the tools, at least $100 and would probably take the average person longer than someone who does it all the time so allow half a day again. Not much in it really. I have had to replace a fair few old jarrah timber gate posts over the years and think only one came out of the concrete footing. Not really any benefit though as the footing still needs to come out to do it right.

A jackhammer with a clay spade may allow you to dig the surrounding clay away more easily. In fact if you can free the neck of the conctrete to get a chain around it run it over a post to a 4wd you may be able to pull it out.

CHeers
Michael

I am in agreement with Burnsy and Echidna. A year ago I replaced our entire front fence as some of the posts were rotten.
Tiger - I feel your pain, we have a lot of clay (near Norman Creek catchment in Brisbane), to get the post footings out I had to use a pick, sledgehammer, spade and star picket (good for breaking up clay) to remove the footings. It is hard work but once your figure out how you get a techique going. I removed 7 in a day and a half.

Good luck.

<TABLE id=HB_Mail_Container height="100%" cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0 UNSELECTABLE="on"><TBODY><TR height="100%" UNSELECTABLE="on" width="100%"><TD id=HB_Focus_Element vAlign=top width="100%" background="" height=250 UNSELECTABLE="off">As others have said on this thread it was a painful job. I was lucky that the was only about 550 mm in the ground. What I found really difficult was not so much excavating the soil area around the post (in order to lever out the remains of the post) but the hardness of some of the concrete used down there. It was rock hard . The heaviest crow bar that I had simply had no affect on the concrete. It was a few hundred mm into the ground so no sledgehammer would have helped. I ended up drilling numerous holes and weakening the concrete so that I could then thump it with the crowbar. It cost me hours of work.

Wendy, hopefully yours isn't as bad. Would recommend getting a jackhammer if you hit hard concrete like I did. There were 2 different types of concrete used on my post. One broke fairly easily, the other didn't. Whatever tool exists for this sort of work is worth it. My experience was hard, exhausting work. I think fence builders really earn their money.
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There in lies the problem and is nothing but a recipe for a future problem... concreting timber into the ground. The timber shrinks thus creating a gap thus being a trap for water/moisture to enter and do its thing.

Hope you replace it with gal steel.