Planning for 2015

We are rather more than a year into our project and have a clearer idea of what we want to get done in 2015:

• Get the temporary electricity supply sorted, this is mostly getting Luke the electrician to do his stuff.
• Finish the fencing. Two things, firstly putting posts in the fence between ourselves and next doors, secondly closing off the open gap on the north side and installing the gates. We need George to have cleared the concrete from the area and to dig holes for three strainers and two gateposts.
• Clear concrete, this a job for George. He thought he could get two days in January to break the long silage pit wall and the concrete ramp to the south of the steading. He would pile up the concrete for us. We need to remove the concrete lintel embedded in the east leg of the steading so that the wall across the courtyard can come down. There is then the hardstanding and shed bases. We would keep some of it to stand materials on.
• Get the water supply installed. We will contact Cadgers Plant Hire, Clola, to run the pipe under the road, they did the same for the Aitkens. We can do the steading end ourselves. We are waiting for Scottish Water to produce a quote for their bit.
• Buy equipment and tools including scaffolding, roof ladder, large angle grinder, concrete breaker.
• Get a demolition warrant. Steve Brown says he is on the case, should submit mid-January and we should have it some six weeks later. This allows us to start removing the roof of the steading.
• Remove enough roof to allow Ric to start on the stonework, assuming he is available. We want to see if the slates are good enough to re-use, possibly on the bothy. The roof timbers will add to our firewood pile.
• Demolish the faulty gable end.
• Foundations for rebuilding the gable end.
• Re-build the gable end.
• Re-apply for planning permission, mostly Steve Brown.
• Get the building warrant, mostly Steve Brown.

We have a boundary fence

The steading has existing post-and-wire fencing along the east and south boundaries – not brilliant, but just about OK. The west boundary existed only on paper because it splits what was originally the one farmhouse and steading into two. The neighbour has already run a fence halfway up the line, there is about 35m missing. The northern boundary is not fenced because the field the other side is arable and there is the 50cm-thick silage pit wall along most of the length. With the odd bulge of the boundary at the north-east corner, there is about 75m not fenced. With a dog and a neighbour, we need a full boundary. Our planning permission requires us to use post-and-wire fencing, appropriate for the location. We want a pair of farm-style gates to get on and off our property, but with room to drive off the track.

How to do it – this was new to me, so I looked online, there is quite a bit of information, but with people doing things in rather different ways. Scottish Natural Heritage do a useful series of short illustrated guides, although they look like they are at the top end of the market. The local standard is not so demanding. We want something in-between.

The design: the architect’s plan shows where we need to add fencing and where (we think) we need to put the strainer posts and gates. The strainers all need stays (struts). We would put posts at approx 2m intervals between the strainers.

Getting the tools: We aimed to do as much as we could ourselves to keep the cost down, using hand tools. Before we headed up to Aberdeen for Christmas, we ordered from Amazon 1) a chisel-ended 17lb 60″ x 1″ post hole bar (Faithfull, £31), 2) a post hole digger (Roughneck, £30), 3) a 15kg 170mm-wide post driver (Silverline, £38) and 4) fencing pliers (Draper, £11). It did not take much investigation to go for Gripple products to tension the fence – it can all be done by one unskilled person. We bought 40 medium Gripple joiners and 20 of their T-bar joiners at a bit more than £1 per item. It did mean buying a Gripple TORQ tool off Ebay for £65, used to tension the fittings. About £250 in total, however we will have the means to replace the existing fence as it decays.

Getting fencing materials: was not as easy as I had expected. I was all for getting my three quotes and picking the best value. I looked online for fairly local places and found Ellon Timber, North East Timber Supplies (Peterhead) and Midmar Timber. I phoned Ellon Timber and agreed that I would email them what we needed. All timber to be pressure treated, all metal to be mild steel and galvanised:

• 16 x peeled round strainer posts, 2.4m x 150mm (to be buried 1.2 in the ground)
• 26 x peeled round stays, pointed, 1.8m x 60mm
• 66 x square posts, pointed, 1.7m x 75mm (we need some elsewhere on the property)
• 2 x square gate posts, 2.4m x 150mm
• 3 x 50m rolls of pig netting (C8/80/15)
• 1 x roll of 3.15mm straining wire
• 1 x roll of 2-ply barbed wire
• 40mm staples

I waited a week and phoned to ask how they were getting on – not very far. I had phoned North-East Timber Supplies and got no answer – ever. After a week I phoned their associated hardware store, to be told that they did not sell agricultural fencing. With time running out, I phoned Midmar Timber. I emailed the list and got a quote back after an hour and a half – within £50 of my estimate. There was no time to arrange a delivery so I arranged to drive over and ferry the materials to the steading. I did it in three loads in the Ford Galaxy, over a full day.

A load of 2.4. strainer posts.

A load of internediate posts,pig wire, barbed wire.

Safely tucked up in the bothy.

Hopefully not for too long.

A re-design: Mr Jamieson, the farmer, suggested a last-minute simplification of the boundary at the north-east corner. His plan was rather different from ours, with an extra finger of our property sticking out into his land. He suggested we have a right-angle and run new fence down in a straight line to the south-east corner of the property. We lose a chunk of the odd bit sticking out, but gain a wedge down the rest of the east boundary. It was all a bit arbitrary, but it looks as though we benefit by c 30 square metres, so we agreed. It does mean we have over-ordered on the strainers and stays.

The ‘before’ plan for our new fencing.

The final plan,with our complicated corner squared off, simpler for us and our neighbouring farmer.

Getting the strainers in the ground: I had no intention of digging 1.2m holes into stony clay soil, so we invested in half a day of digger hire. George, our digger man, used his small bucket and got going. My job was to get the strainer post for each hole and a barrow load of concrete blocks to wedge the post in place – I quickly fell behind. George had other things to do, then followed me round filling the holes and tamping the soil. We did not hit bedrock, or even big boulders, although his digger did grumble a bit at digging into some of the driveway.

The first strainer, installed and braced.

These strainers mark our boundary with next door’s driveway.

The stays: I trimmed the stays back because they were longer than I wanted. I cut part of each point off, at a slight angle, to increase the area of contact with the strainer. I then sawed parallel cuts about an inch deep across the strainer, where the stay was to lodge. I used a bolster and club hammer to chip out a rectangular cone shape, the right size for the end of the stay. It was remarkably neat and effective. I buried the other end of the stay in the ground. Where this was into track bed, I chipped out a groove and lodged the stay against a block of stone. For the others, I used the post hole digger and buried the cut portion of the strainer as a stob, for the stay to push against.

To place a strut, firstly saw two lines across teh width of the strainer, about 3cm deep.

Use a bolster to break out the deep part of the cuts to make a rectangular pit.

Cut the point off a strut.

Fit point of strut into the strainer.

In softer groung, use the offcut of the strut as a stob, to stop the other end of the strut being pushed sideways.

The bottom wire: Once the strainers and stays were sorted, I ran single strainer wires about 10cm above ground level, with a gripple at each end – I used the Gripple tool to tension the wire, to get a nice twang.

The posts: we used 51 posts, most were easy to put in place. We laid them out at 2m intervals, using the strainer wire to position them. I used the post hole bar to chisel down and create the guide hole, about 50cm. I then used the post thumper to knock the post down to leave roughly 110cm above ground. The problem area was the top part of the east boundary. The soil was heavily compacted and stony. I had a job getting the bar into and out of the ground and could not thump them down any further. They also ended up rather more wonky than the rest. We will find out if they resist cattle leaning on them. I stapled the strainer wires to each post, to a consistent 10cm above ground.

The posts are 2m apart. We made the inital holes with the post bar and then used the post thumper to drive them in.

The netting: I laid out the netting and fixed it around the starter strainers 10cm above the strainer wire, using the T gripples on the thicker top and bottom wires. They did not grip on the other wires, so I twisted the wires around using the pliers – a slow job. On the stretch between ourselves and next door, I cut the netting roughly half-way along and overlapped the two pieces, then fixed the second piece to the end strainer. I put a gripple on each wire on either side of the join and tightened them a step at a time. I had to cut out a few vertical strands as I continued to pull the wires through. I stopped when I had a nice twang, then cut the pulled wires back to a couple of inches. On the long stretch of fencing, I laid out 50m lengths from each end, then used the remainder of the first roll to bridge the gap. By the time I had twisted the netting together at each end, I only had a metre or so of overlap. I used 2 lots of 8 gripples to join the three pieces together. Tensioning the resulting 110m was slow and involved trimming out 6 vertical wires. Finally I did get a good tension, but would have done better to have put the shorter length of netting at one end of the run. This would have put a join each side of the middle strainer and I could have tensioned each length separately. I stapled the top wire to all posts, getting the bottom wire a consistent 10cm above the strainer, then went back and stapled the fourth strand down and the bottom strand.

The finished fence.

One f our wet & muddy corners.

The top wire: I used another strand of strainer wire on the section of fence between ourselves and next door, 10cm above the netting, again held by gripples. On the long run I used barbed wire. This was a pig to work with, heavy and snagging on the ground, clothing and flesh. I laid out enough wire to let me twist one end around the starter strainer and staple it 10cm above the netting. I continued to lay out the wire to the middle strainer and used my big wrecking bar to strain it. It has a notch cut out of the short right-angled end, to catch nail heads, I got hold of a convenient barb and used the wrecking bar to lever the wire around the middle strainer. One of us held the bar whilst the other stapled at least two barbs to the strainer, these held the wire in tension. It did a good job. I stapled the wire to each post. We carried on laying the wire to the far end of the run and strained that length around the end strainer, then went back and stapled it to the posts.

What we could not get done: we could not put up the run of fence with the gates in, there was too much concrete in the way. George will clear some of it, hopefully in January, so that we can finish the job next time we are up there. I also need to put some posts in the section between ourselves and next door.

The end-result: was not bad, about 7 or 8 out of 10. Some posts were not lined up very well or were knocked down a little too far. It should survive normal use for many years. It was really quite slow – about 3.5 full person-days for 145m total. This is partly down to learning on the job and making mistakes. I fixed the netting upside-down to strainer on two occasions and had to untwist and retwist all 8 wires – a wasted hour. The ground was in places very compacted and stony, in others wet, muddy and sticky. The weather was fairly rough on the last day – horizontal sleet. I would be confident of doing a better job next time, for example when the remaining fencing gets too bad.

Planning our fencing

We own a very active and curious collie. The neighbouring farmer has cattle and sheep. A proper dog-proof boundary is a priority. Our planning permission says this has to be traditional post-and-wire.

The Missing boundary fence: First, find your boundary. I have a plan, measured up by our architect as part of the sale of the property to ourselves. It shows distances to two decimal places of metres. A large chunk along the north-east and northern boundaries are marked as ‘undefined’ i.e. there is nothing on the ground to show where it should goes. I marked it up as best I could in October, with 1″ x 1″ short stakes, but I do not expect it to still there by Christmas, when we aim to build the fence. One problem is in the north-east corner, with a number of changes of direction, but no angles on the master plan. There are an infinite number of solutions, so I did something that looks OK and will await feedback from the neighbouring farmer.

We will run the fence along the northern boundary towards the shared track and turn 70 degrees towards the steading, to join close to where the garage door will be i.e. it will be outside the fence. We will put two wooden farm-style gates in that section to give access to visitors and to the trucks that will empty the septic tank. The latter can be up to 8 tonnes and need to get to within 25m of the tank. The boundary resumes down the side of the west leg, with a gate onto our driveway, then follows the boundary to meet with the existing fence put up by the neighbour. Looking at existing fences, we will use standard pig netting with strainers and posts some 1.2m above ground. We will run barbed wire along the tops where the fence faces fields. We will use straining wire on the boundary with our neighbours.

George, our digger driver is available over the Christmas period to dig holes for the strainers. The rest we can do ourselves.

The blue line shows the new fencing we need to construct.