Southgate

 Cedar is pretty wood.  It smells nice.  You can cook with it, like Cedar Plank Smoked Salmon.  What do you not do with Cedar?  You don't use it as fence posts.  My Old Fence...  Yeah, Cedar Posts...  On the Southgate the Latch side post has been broken, at the base, for maybe a year.  I used some old fence parts to shore it up, and keep it from moving.  Then I got tired of not being able to use Southgate.  It's my direct access to the front yard, and the mailbox, so I had motivation to fix it.  Removing the post, gate latch, and a little stub of fence that was there was easy.  I simply removed my reinforcements, picked up, and carried it away.  The Concrete Slug in the ground was another matter altogether.

Sometimes I call these stumps, which isn't really the correct term, meaning there is something left above the ground.  Slug is a better term because it is this massive, sometimes more than a hundred pounds, chunk of concrete which is buried in the Texas Clay Soil.  Sometimes I get a break, and there is a solid piece of wood that I can drive a big Eye Screw into so that I can get a handle on it.  In this case the remainder of the Cedar Post was completely rotted.  I was able to pull it apart with my hands like it was Pot Roast, and it was fibrous like that.  Slow cooked Cedar Post anyone?

When I do repairs on my fence I am going to re-double the strength of what was there originally.  I am also going to use superior building materials.  I am replacing a 4X4 Post with a 6X6 Post, which more that doubles it's area.  These posts are Yellawood, which is pressure treated Pine which is rated for ground contact.  Cedar is insect resistant, but it is a really soft wood, and is not intended to be a load bearing, structural piece, like a post.  By using the pressure treated wood I can continue the natural look of a wooden fence, but get the superior weather resistance, and structural integrity of engineered wood.

The next step is to secure it, which means more concrete.  This hole took almost two bags of concrete, maybe around 110 pounds.  I've developed a technique mixing concrete in a contractor bucket using a Sharp Shooter Space to mix it.  It's a Do what you can with what you got scheme.  I've been using this technique for several years, and it works good.  I have also evolved my Post Hole preparation technique.

At one time I was using concrete forms to shape the concrete slugs.  Don't do that.  Concrete forms make you dig the hole too wide to get the form in.  Then you have to back fill around the outside of the concrete form to fill in the air space left.  This leaves weak spots in the soil around the concrete slug which will cause your post to shift out of plumb.  Fence posts that are not straight, not plumb, look terrible.  Now, as I dig the post hole, I use the sides of the hole as the fulcrum for my digging lever, the Sharp Shooter Spade.  This compresses the soil around the upper part of the hole, and makes the footing for your fence post more solid.  When you pour the concrete, let it set, and then cure the new fence post will be very solidly secured, and will not move.  I've used this technique with the last thirteen posts I've set, and they are all doing well.

The next piece of the fence I am going to work on is the Gate.  Sure, now the gate can be opened, closed, latched, and locked.  But, it is 20 year old Cedar, and kinda floppy.  Another thing is the design of the gate.  It has no frame.  There are two 2X4 pieces attached to the hinges, and then every thing else is attached to those 2X4s.  I am astounded that it lasted 20 years.  This is the next project...