How to set up a hot wire fence???
 

I have a SS-725CS Havahart fence energizer but I don't have an instruction manual for setting it up.

After an hours searching for it online I thought I would just ask you lovely people my main question.

Do I run the hot wire in a loop around my garden and attach both ends to the charger fence outlet peg or do I just have one end of the wire going from there and the end of the loop around the garden twisted around the wire near the charger box?

Its a small detail to have held up this project but this NEEDS to work so I don't want to ge it wrong.

You do not need to loop the hot wire at all. Just run it all around what ever you need to hotwire. It does not need to be connected at the end of the hotwire at all. Just ends.
The ground wire however should be grounded in at least a couple of spots so the ground wire Will End at the grounding rod. So get a couple of grounding rods pound them into the ground oh roughly 20 foot apart or further and connected the ground wire to both rods. But the hot wire just make sure you use good insulators on whatever you are going to attach it to and when you get to the end thats it. Just ends.

Super! Thank you VERY much!

The ground wire, do I need to insulate it along its length or can it be bare wire?

It can be a bare wire.

Ground does not have to be insulated, cause the fact is you tighten it to that Ground Rod with a clamp.

Let pretend that my ground rod is a bit of re-bar, will just twisting the wire onto it work?

And thanks very much for the help guys, I am so grateful!

It will "work", just not WELL
You need a good solid connetion, just as in any electrical device

..............Buy an 8 foot ground round and cut it into 3 equal lengths ! You can buy mechanical clamps for each rod ! , fordy:cowboy:

Perhaps the penny jar will come up with just enough for a ground rod on Monday when the hardware store opens but until then, if I twist it really good and keep the ground wet and I hope really hard perhaps it will keep the puppy out of the veg. garden.

All the wire is now in place at least and has lots of shiny aluminum foil on it so the dogs can see it clearly. A long hot job but hopefully the next bit will go smoother.

You can ground it to a barbed wire fence with steel posts and it will have dozens or hundreds of ground connections. I've done some pretty flimsy ground arrangements and never had any trouble, but note that there is almost always more than enough soil moisture here.

.............Once you have the Gnd Rods set , keep the ground around each rod moist all year round ! Especially during the summer , conductivity between the hot wire and ground moisture content are directly related . The drier the soil becomes the weaker the shock effect becomes . , fordy:cowboy:

Fordy, I have never heard of anyone doing this. Where I live I have seen places that you hook two 8ft rods together to get a good ground at that one spot. I just can not see a grounding rod less than 3ft long making a good ground.

.................True , my suggestion was predicated upon his money issues , not the "best" decision based upon what is the optimum decision electronically . , fordy:cowboy:

Her :D And yep, right now money is tight but it is still so GREAT living here that I don't worry anymore, just enjoy life and make do as best as we can. We just moved up to Georgia so are now on clay based soil instead of the pure sand we had in Florida so, right now, its nice and wet but that will change as the summer goes on.

I will put the re-bar in today with my really old but WONDERFUL core type post hole digger so its nice and deep.

Shall let y'all know how it goes.

..................Rebar will probably provide some level of conductivity , but you should still attach the gnd wire to the rebar with the same type of compression clamp just as you would with a gnd rod made of copper coated steel !
...................Once the moisture content of the top two feet or so of clay has been removed by sun and wind the shock value of the electric fence will go down significantly . Animals who discover such will ignore the electric fence and go where they please . , fordy:shocked:

I feel driving the rebar will give you a better Ground!

Does it matter how far away the grounding rod is from the fence that is being charged? Can I have the charger and grounding assebly at the house and run an insulated wire say.....100yds down to the fence?

....................Yes you can ! But , chargers working at max output emit several thousand volts at almost NO current that is why they can shock , and , NOT Kill ! Most insulation on regular wire is designed to work on 600 volts or less !
....................Resistance is proportional to wire length and Inversely proportional to wire diameter , so for standard size bare wire the longer it is the lower the voltage becomes the farther away it gets from the charger ! You can mitigate this effect by , running a ground wire parallel to the Hot wires along the fence . Then , every so often drive a ground rod and attach to the ground wire . Actually , you can use one of the fence wires as a ground wire by simply driving a ground rod and bonding it to the fence wire ! , fordy:bowtie:

That will work. That is a long bit of insulated wire, you know you need fencer grade insulation, that can handle the very high voltage. Regular house wire might not be good enough, you need the fencer wire, or run it overhead on insulators so it doesn't bleed out. The ground rod is fine that far away, if....

A good ground is often overlooked, and you've gotten a bit of all over the place advice on that.....

A good ground goes down into moisture, deeper is better. An 8 foot rod driven 7 feet or more deep is by far the best. If you have very dry soil, or rock, or some such issue, shorter rods are what you have to do, but they are a worse idea, and you need more of them.

You want a very good tight connection between stuff. Clamps are the best. I've used a vice grips in short term setups. Wrapping wire works, but long many curls of wrap, and it is not as good. Over time rust or a film develops between the wire and what you wrap it on, and gets weaker. A clamp is better.

Drive the ground rod into moist soil. Often the drip line of a building works well, where rain soaks the area. If you dig a hole and backfill around the rod, be sure to water it very very very well, so the ground is saturated and packs back around the rod. Driving it would be better, but if you do the hole then drown it. :)

Paul

Ouch! It works :rock:

I found another length of re-bar so one got driven in and the other one got dug in as it was too bent to drive. I watered in that one really well and then hooked it all up.

It didn't want to work at first but walking around some of the foil strips we put on for visibility had slipped over to the posts and were grounding it all out there. Once that was sorted the pup got his first shock and hasn't gone back for seconds.

So he got to play for 4 hours off his cable and is a MUCH happier puppy!

Last question. Since I'll have the charger at the house could I just tie into my houses grounding rod?

NO! Read any electric charger manual.

No.

We have used a lightening rod ground, worked well, but you can mess up real sensitive electronics tying into the electrical ground, along with other issues....

Paul

The manual is online at the Havahart website http://www.havahart.com/resources/manuals-msds