Installing Cedar fence posts

[ranger4327]

Greetings...gonna start installing cedar fence posts very soon, but wanted some thoughts and ideas as to how to go about it. The fence posts will vary in diameter, but mostly average about 6 inches. I have a three point hitch post hole digger. Now... any suggestions on how to go from here? How big of a hole. Should it be bigger than the post diameters? Can i drill a smaller hole and force the posts into them? OR, drill larger holes and compact something around them?

Cement? Soil? Gravel? To compact around the posts?

I was thinking drilling a smaller hole, then ramming the posts into the smaller hole.....

what ya's think?

[Tom in TN]

Ranger,

I don't know if the cedar posts in Maine are different from the cedar posts in Tennessee, but here is my experience with cedar in Tennessee.

I live on a very rough, very hilly farm. We have cedar trees everywhere. I have used many cedar posts over the years. Although they are "free" to me, the fact is, I'm not really satisfied with them. I dig holes that are bigger than the post and then compact dirt around them. Within four or five years, the posts are loose in the ground. Within ten years, the posts are useless.

The outer rings on my posts are whitish wood and then the core is red. The whitish rings rot too quickly. The red wood is still solid after a few years, but the outer part of the post is rotted.

Frankly, I've pretty well abandoned using cedar. Maybe if I shaved the outer rings or coated the posts with some kind of preservative before I buried them they would last longer. I haven't tried doing that.

Good luck with your fence posts.

Tom in TN

[Gabriel]

Exactly how you need to go about it is dependent on the fence that they'll be holding. I use 3 or fewer HT wires, so have found that I can get away with only one 8"+ post (3' deep) with no braces on the ends. If I was running something with more tension, like barbed wire, that wouldn't work.

You can make the posts last longer by putting them in a barrel, partially filled with used oil. I don't know exactly how long it takes for them to absorb it as we maintain a good stockpile.

[genebo]

Being free is a good thing. I like that.

I drill a larger hole about 2' deep. The cedar post goes in big end down. I add dirt back into the hole a couple of inches at a time, tamping it down with the end of the handle on my sledgehammer. It really gets tight this way and lets you make minor adjustments as you go.

Nothing lasts forever. If the posts get loose, the same sledgehammer handle will tighten them up. If they rot off, you'll be glad you didn't use cement. You can dig around the part left in the ground and pull it out. Put in a new free cedar post and go another 10 or 12 years.

My cedar posts have lasted longer than the cheap salt treated posts I used. Actually all the cedar posts are still good after 9 years. So are the expensive salt treated posts I put at corners. The difference between the expensive posts and the cedar posts? Cost.

There is one difference between my posts and those that Tom in Tennessee used: Mine had no gray layer. Mine were fresh cut posts, either from live trees or from trees freshly killed by my goats. Mine were red all the way to the outside.

[Swale84]

Tom- You probably have Eastern Red Cedar. It helps, at least with my limited experience, if you use logs that were cut in the winter as opposed to warmer weather. An old farmer around here told me it had something to do with the sap. I have a neighbor who used cedar cut in the middle of summer that are rotting off at the ground after 6-7 years, where I have seen cedar on my farms perimeter fence that I know have been there over 10 years and are still solid. If I were going to use a lot of cedar for fence, I would buy that black tar stuff that they put on the bottom of telephone poles to help them last longer.

You are right about the white outer ring of wood. It will rot much faster than the red heartwood. So, obviously, it would be to one's advantage to use cedar logs with a lot of heartwood....these logs also do better at market.

I love cedar!

[farmgirl6]

I learned an good trick from my hay man, any wooden post, chain saw off the top at a slant, this allows water to run off and not soak to the center which reduces the life span and leads to splitting....