John Zwaagstra of Rocky Mountain House, Alta. — west of Red Deer — sent in this tip for creating an
anchor or corner post for a barbed wire fence. I thought I would run it before spring, but since it appears spring is never coming, I decided to put it in the May issue of Cattleman’s Corner.
Zwaagstra’s approach for anchoring the corner post is to use a simple “cage” made out of rebar to go around the base of a standard five-or six-inch diameter fence post and then fill the hole and cage with cement.
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The accompanying diagrams show a top view, as if you were looking down at the top of the post, and the other diagram shows a side view of the hole and post. Here are the steps:
1.Zwaagstra first digs a hole in the ground about 34 inches deep, and 14 to 16 inches wide (square). He stands a five-or six-in diameter, round or square post into the centre of this hole.
2.He takes a three-to four-foot long piece of 3/8-inch rebar and bends it into a square frame as shown in the top view diagram. Depending on the size of hole and length of rebar you end up with a frame or cage that’s 10 to 12 inches square. For each anchor post he actually makes three of these square frames.
3.Back at the fence post hole, he pours about three inches of concrete into the bottom of the hole, slips one of these frames over the top of the posts and lays it on the bottom layer of concrete.
4. He then pours more concrete to about half way up the depth of the hole, lays another rebar frame on top of the concrete at that point.
5.He then takes four, 34-inch straight sections of rebar and pushes those down on the inside corners of the rebar frames, through the freshly poured concrete. So you have two square frames around the post near the bottom and midway up the hole, and then these four rebar pieces standing up at the corners.
6.Finally, fill the rest of the hole with concrete to about three inches from ground level, add the third square rebar frame at that point, and make sure four rebar posts are on the inside the last rebar frame.
7.Then finish filling the hole with concrete to ground level, sloping the very top so water runs off.
Zwaagstra says to leave the post for about a week to allow the concrete to dry. But when it is dry, you have a good solid anchor post for a corner or gate, and no other cross bracing is needed.
He says he installs one of these anchor posts every quarter to half a mile and at fence corners, and he hasn’t had a problem of them lifting out of the ground.
So there is an anchor post idea you may want to try.
