Power flex poly T posts

[Go for 300]

Anyone have experience with them? Are they what they are cracked up to be? How do they stand up to cold, wind, and/or snow load?

Thank you. I am looking for the best self insulating posts that I can get. Tired of chasing phantom shorts on metal t posts with plastic insulators...

[ycanchu2]

Originally Posted by Go for 300

Anyone have experience with them? Are they what they are cracked up to be? How do they stand up to cold, wind, and/or snow load?

Thank you. I am looking for the best self insulating posts that I can get. Tired of chasing phantom shorts on metal t posts with plastic insulators...

What do you mean? Is it shorting thru the insulator? i use the steelTposts with the black pin lock insulators on my permanent lines, but I don;t doubt that the poly T posts would be just fine....but never have used them.

[Copperhead]

First: Purchase the Stafix Fence Compass. I know they are about $100, but if I lose mine, I'll be buying another tomorrow.

2nd: Most of my phantom shorts occur when deer bend a piece of broken barbwire around my hot wire. Occasionally a deer will disengage the the wire from the insulator, especially the "hooker" insulators, not so much the pinlocks. After dropping a tree or two on the fence, I did have the hot wire force its way through a corner insulator and short on the corner wire. Once I threw the ashes from the woodstove through the electric fence and had the smallest copper wire bridge the gap between a hot wire and ground wire -- took me 2 days to find that without the fence compass (which I purchased soon after!)

3rd: My favorite insulator is the pinlock from Tractor Supply. Clamps on to T-Posts and has holes to be screwed (not nailed . . . personal preference) into wooden posts and trees. Takes a direct hit from a tree to break the top insulator. All the rest survived.

Finally, I am really curious to hear other people's opinions, especially regarding the Powerflex posts. Can I really replace my 6' T-Posts? I know they are lighter and easier to carry up to the ridge, but can they be driven without hammering a pilot hole?

P.S. My prefered fence is 6-strands of high-tensile on an 8" spacing with Strands 1,3,5 (from the ground) being HOT and strands 2,4,6 being GROUND.

[Go for 300]

"Finally, I am really curious to hear other people's opinions, especially regarding the Powerflex posts. Can I really replace my 6' T-Posts? I know they are lighter and easier to carry up to the ridge, but can they be driven without hammering a pilot hole?"

If you can live with them not exactly straight, I would say you could put them in without a pilot hole. And that is if the ground is favorable. For rockier soils and hard ground DON'T TRY.

We put in about 300 of them yesterday. We ended up using a metal t-post as the pilot hole. Go about 8-10 inches and then pull it out. If the pilot post starts to bend from being wiggled to pull it out, get a new one. (Again if you are terribly concerned about the poly posts being straight)

Otherwise, they look good when they are all in. Just have to string the wire now...

[matt_man]

We are using Powerflex fiberglass fence posts and they work awesome.

[thestartupman]

I have installed about 100 power flex poly T post this past winter. I like them, but there are a few issues. As was stated before, they are a little hard to install straight. They like to bend as they meet resistance. If you put your foot against them as they start to bend, you can straighten some of them out as you finish driving them. I have had probably half a dozen fracture as they were being driven in. Not real bad, but bottom couple of inches. I prefer to use the 1.5" x 5' post, but seem to always have problems having them in stock, so I have about half of them that are 1.75" x 5' post. I live close enough that I by directly from them instead of having them shipped. Once they are in the ground, they seem to hold up great, and look nice too. You can look at my facebook link and see a few pictures of what I have.

[waterbuffy]

Copperhead how does the stafix compass work? I have about 50 acres hillsides fenced with single strand electric and sometimes have an awful time finding a short. I have a digital tester that tells me the amount of electric running on it and suppose to show the direction of the fault but it doesn't do a very good job. That was about $100.

[Awnry Abe]

Water, it sounds like the same tool. For it to work well, it needs a ground path. Younwill notice that it has a large metal grip. When I use mine, and I am wearing my muck boots, I walk around with a light metal rod of some sort, and make sure the metal grip of the tool has a good path thru me to ground.

A poor path to ground has caused me on many occasions when out walking to think that my fence is non-op. My expensive well sealed and insulated muck boots are the worst culprit. I can actually make repairs to a completely hot fence wearing them.

Aside from my meter, my second favorite test is to use a fresh green blade of grass. As long as I feel a sufficient tickle from the grass, I know things are working well enough. Last August there wasn't anything green to be found, not even a weed, so I bought my tester. I also can hear most of the shorts I get. I can't hear a dead short, though.

Well, that drifted. How much do the poly T posts cost?