The Easy Way to Fix a Fencepost

If you have a fencepost that is leaning, rocking or just broken then to fix it using a concrete spur is going to be the quickest and easiest method.

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[EdouardBOnboardVideos]

Hi Stuart, I just want to say thank you for your videos, they've helped me so much after recently buying my first house! I never comment on videos but you should know that there are a lot of "silent" viewers out there who really appreciate your videos. Have a good day !

[nicholashilken]

20 years ago my wife and I bought our first house. My dad gave me the readers digest DIY handbook. It was a tremendous help for a novice dealing with a 1930s house in desperate need of LTC, but this channel would have made it 10x easier for us, and I'm finding it a gold mine of useful information now. Thanks so much Stuart! A real service to DIYers.

[olson.pamela]

Your fix up looks great. I had a carpenter once tell me “make sure any temporary patch up can last 20 years”. Wisdom.

[happyharry]

I take it by your diplomatic remarks about people being passionate about mixing post Crete you have had the usual abusive messages that people seem to think is perfectly ok to send.Its such a shame when all you are trying to do is help people, somebody who has never met you feels free to vent. Im sure they wouldn't walk up to you in the street and start ranting, but they feel perfectly ok to do it from the safety of the keyboard. Keep up the informative and lighthearted work

[sidremey]

Nice job Stuart. I also used 75x75mm concrete posts but was able to attach them with M10x225mm coach bolts. It turns out that the constriction in the holes is because of the concrete forming process and it is quite easy to drill those holes out to 10 or 12mm

[andrewwilson]

Excellent little project as ever. Might be worth adding that neither the fence nor the post will mind if you mount the spur to the side ofthe post. 'Slightly' harder in the digging out phase, but will retain width of access if things are tight, and make mowing or strimming a bit easier. And you could have gone back and fitted coach bolts quite easily with access all the way through.

[reeceporter]

Post Buddy fence repair stakes from Amazon are another great and super quick repair. Used some recently after noticing my fence was very wobbly in strong winds. 3 posts supported and done within 20 minutes

[brucemansfield]

Hi Stuart. One thing you might want to try when trying to plumb a post to a string is after you attach your string to your two fixed points, slip a shim ( say 1/2" thick) under the string near each end. While pulling the post towards the string, slide another shim ( the same thickness) between the string and the post. When the shim contacts the string, the post is plumb. The nice thing about this practice is that while working, you can tell if the post has moved out of plumb. The way you do it, the post could lean into the string slightly, and it's hard to tell. Anyway, just how I've done it for about 50 or so years. Like your videos.

[davidcollier]

Great tip about putting the ledger board through and screwing it in to hold the bottom rails together, as its usually that the post that's rotted is the one where the bottom rails join

[montyzumazoom]

Good helpful vid (as always).
I've done this to all my fence posts (about 17 in total). It usually takes me around 2 hours to do per post due to the old concrete, broken bricks and lumps of flint (I live close to the Sussex downs), that you have to break up and dig out of the hole. Plus I'm not a 20 year old lad anymore!
My method is to use a long fencing spade, pointed breaker bar and a very powerful SDS hammer drill with a chisel function and using a very long chisel in it. Even so the best method I've found once you get around 1.5 feet deep is to reach in and pull out the soil by a gloved hand. I usually stop when I get to armpit depth!
Then in goes the concrete spur (after drilling out the tapered holes to suit the screws), using bits of stone or similar underneath the spur to make sure the base is at the right depth. I have had good success using 10mm diameter, long coach screws and large thick square washers to secure the spur to the post. Place the screws in the spur holes and give them a couple of good whacks with a club hammer to get the points in. Then screw them up using a socket and ratchet wrench. Making sure everything is square.
You may need to support the post using a length of timer screwed to the post and at an angle in the ground to steady it and keep it square before concreting.
I always use postfix. Sometimes using bits of removed material like flint, stone or half bricks to fill the surrounding area of the dug out hole if it's too large.
In goes some water and then the post fix. I usually use 1.5 bags per post on my 2m high fence. Tamp the mix down with the end of a piece of wood to make sure the mix is right around the spur deep down.
Just a tip. I had a very difficult to reach corner post that needed securing. Awful job with the fence (arris rail close boarded) still attached and at less than a 90 degree angle to another fence. Add to this a holly tree close by so not much room to work in. All I could do after digging out the hole was to position the spur on the corner of the post 45 degrees to the faces. But it worked very well with the coach screws driven into the corner of the post. You should have seen my rope work and how I pulled that post true using another post and a couple of trees (spider man took some web building tips of me that day).😂

[c.a.g.]

Besides being very knowledgeable, Stuart has the ability to make you laugh with just a look. Great stuff, Stuart!

[StoneHighland]

Thank you, I put up a small picket fence here in the Highlands in July using that darn Postcrete, now December, the whole lot has collapsed.. I'm moving back to Peckham 😕

[OZADZ]

I mostly use mixed dry concrete if I have to use it for posts. There is often enough moisture in the soil for it to harden. On the other hand, you can pack dry concrete very tightly. It provides a very stable support for the post.
That is just my way 🙂

[turkeytrac]

Great video Stuart!! Retired canadian carpenter here, i certainly don't know everything, I'm not sure if "spurs" are sold here in Canada, but your post ( no pun intended) gave me a idea of using what is available. So I'll probaby clean out the hole like you did, but my spur wil be a ground contact rated, presuure treated 4x4, with carriage bolts. I'm also going to try your method for postcrete. Like you, I to don't think its ever properly mixed. So thanks for the video.

[chrisdrake]

Cheers, Stuart! My dear departed father imparted a few wise words to me over the years, the strongest maxim being ‘good fences make good neighbours’. With that in mind, when we moved house and needed to replace boundary fences, and feeling a bit flusher in the pocket than now, we installed concrete posts and gravel boards in the hope that their longevity would beat off the occasionally very rough south-westerly winds we get. 20 years on, and the investment is still going strong. Unfortunately, the only bit of fence within the back garden wasn’t similarly constructed, and and two of four posts are rotted through, so it looks like I’m in for a busy weekend before the autumn winds return. Happy, peaceful and dry bank holidays to you and all your viewers.

[uctxeip]

Hi. Thank you for showing this interesting video. Around, one year ago, I did similar work in my garden as an amateur DIYer both to install about twelve new wooden posts and to repair two broken wooden posts for six-foot tall fence panels. I like the appearance of wooden posts. Prior to doing the work, I watched a lot of YouTube videos and looked at other material too. I found my own way of fixing the fence, which may or may not be conventional.


My experience is that concrete spurs with wooden posts are very durable. Most of the older wooden posts around the garden were installed with a concrete spur by contractors around 30 years ago, and they are still sturdy. One problem, with concrete posts is that if they are knocked heavily, they will crack and only the internal iron reinforcing bars will hold the concrete post upright albeit shakily. I had two concrete posts break by a tree falling on the fence in a storm and two when a neighbour's car backed into the fence.

For my recent DIY fencing, I used 4 x 4 inch (or metric equivalent) cross-section concrete spurs with 4 x 4 inch cross section wooden posts, because matching the sizes looks better, to me. The spurs were 1.2 m long, very heavy, and more expensive than the smaller ones, but I am glad I used them. I used 3 x 4 inch concrete posts, which were also 1.2 meters long, for my 3 x 3 inch wooden posts. I had no difficulty putting six -inch coach bolts through the ready-made holes in any of the concrete posts; however, I drilled a guide hole in the wooden post to make it easier to screw the coach bolt into the wooden post and avoid the risk of splitting the wood with a large diameter coach bolt. Even though the heads of the large coach bolts were quite large, I also used study washers.

Using 1.2 meter (four-foot) long concrete posts with two-foot deep post holes, I opted to fill the post holes with concrete (not quick-setting concrete) to a few inches below ground level, so the remainder could be levelled with topsoil where lawn or plants would be able to grow. I did quite a lot of marking out and measuring distances to position the new posts correctly. I found a string line was very useful and I used a spirit level a lot to make sure the posts were vertical. Home-made post caps help to stop weathering at he top of he post and give a finished appearance, I would say.

Even though new posts are treated with a wood preservative, I applied additional wood preservative that soaked into the wood to keep out wood worm and rot. In all, I applied wood preservative three times to the new posts before they were in the ground taking extra care to dip the ends into the wood preservative to allow it to run up the grain. This is probably not necessary; however, they have retained a nice colour rather than turning grey, so far. I am interested to see how long they last.

I tried using post-fix (quick-setting) cement once, but it solidified so quickly, that it did not give me chance to make final adjustments to the alignment of the post, so I would always mix my own concrete now. As an amateur DIYer, I work slowly and I need adequate time to adjust the post after the concrete in put in the post hole.

[kevkev]

Funnily enough I have just set a few posts using postcrete. Like you Stuart I'm a traditional type always mixing my own and using more than enough concrete to straighten Eiffel tower!
This time I premixed the postcrete in a builders bucket so I knew it was well mixed and I could then pour it If I didn't get it poured in straight away it was setting in the bucket! And it didn't take many minutes! I feel sure mixed properly it is very strong

[garulusglandarius]

I put concrete spurs in and cased them in wood for my entire fence as I didn’t want complete concrete posts ( I much prefer the look of wood ), when my wooden posts rot I’ll just undo the bolts and replace. Excellent as always Stuart, thank you and best wishes to you and yours 👍

[daniel__clark]

Great content as always. I remember one of the guys from a big American channel (someone like Dusty Lumber or Jimmy DiResta) saying if you want to boost your comments to help the YouTube algorithm, get something wrong; people will be falling over themselves to correct you. Perhaps just talking about something that people are precious about their own methods does much the same.
I hope all the 'discussion ' helped lift you up the YouTube algorithm.

[Quaker]

Well, I'd have to say that your postcrete method in this video makes more sense than bunging it all in and hoping that it will all get mixed properly. Great video, cheers.