After setting the stage for allowing me to sink the necessary posts in the ground, I had everything ready for me to install fence panels to get the western perimeter fence set up. Reason again why I decided upon using already built panels was because the individual components went up in price, most particularly the pressure treated 2x4's. The pickets still hovered around $2 a picket but the boards doubled from $5 to $10 what seemed to be overnight. The whole panels were $45, which when you add up the costs of all the components would make the ready made panels half the price of a pieced together panel. So we dragged the trailer out and muscled several completed panels onto the trailer and repeated the process in reverse when it came time to install the panels.
As usual, I can never get the posts in the ground perfectly as far as 8ft centers are concerned. Even when I nailed one end of the first panel up perfectly centered on the first post, it came up short where I had to attach pieces of 2x4 to the side of the post to add some surface area that will be able to take the nails on the other end of the fence panel to hold the unit in place against the post. Of course this meant that the following panels would be off center as well. But as with the first install, more pieces of 2x4's would follow, allowing me to continue in getting the panels up. As we got fence panels up and proceeded upstream, we started to run into some interesting problems. Since the ground does indeed go upstream at a slight grade, the already made fence panels would not sit perfectly level relative to the posts or the ground. To keep from having the ends of the panels be too far off from the posts that even the added 2x4's wouldn't be enough to allow for attachment to the posts, I had to use the saw to whittle away at the bottoms of some of the panels to ge them to match the contour of the ground enough so that the panels would butt up to one another properly and compensate by having the next panel be a tad higher. At one spot, where we had spread some crushed asphalt, the ground over that area was a little higher than it was on either side, which further made for some unevenness in that I had to really chop away at the bottom of the panel that went over this area so that the panel would fit in a way where the top of it would meet up pretty close to the panels on either side. This ended up stretching what should've taken 30 to 45 minutes to almost a couple hours. In the end we came out victorious and got more panels up. Extending on up to the main driveway still presented the same problem with regard to the grade of the ground. I still had to trim along the bottoms of the fence panels and add pieces of 2x4s to the posts to allow us to nail up the panels and keep them butted together enough to not have gaps where the panels meet up at. I will end up having to add more gravel to the ground along the inside of the fence line where I had to trim the bottoms so as to be able to fill in the gaps that were created by the unevenness of the cuts and the ground. Even though the chickens are behind their own fence, slowing down the progression of any critters from passing these barriers will keep them safer and if in the event any of those birds do make their way out of the chicken yard, they will still be contained. Once we finally made it to the end of the line, I determined that I wanted to add one more section of fencing to the run since the opening for the driveway was too wide after looking at it. I ended up sinking another post real quick then taking an extra panel we had left over that was intended to be used to finish up the remainder of the chicken yard fence and use it to set up the last section of fencing. With that we finished the western section of the perimeter fence. With the fence run done the next phase for this area will be planning and building the gate system. From what I'm visioning in my head so far, I'd have a couple of large posts sunk in the ground along the inside of the fence line. These posts will hold some type of rollers that will allow the frame of the gate to roll along across the two posts, using a gate opener to pull it back and forth. The gate will be made from fence pipe and have wood pickets secured with self tapping screws to make it match up to the rest of the fence. The gate will also have a wheel carriage on the opposite end to keep the gate from sagging and help it roll along smoothly as it opens and closes. In the meantime I'll be moving on to other sections of the perimeter fence, trying to get the rest of these areas closed in.
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