Frisco said:
Interesting pictures.
On the 2nd picture: Why do you make a W in the brace with wire? I don't know what to call it where the wires comes in through the red do hickies and up and around the middle post so W came to mind.
It is sort of a confounding mess of wire, isn't it? When I was first introduced to this concept in a spec sheet for a gov't. watershed fence project, I dismissed it as a waste of material and effort, and the product of hare-brained gov't. engineers :roll: . I hope I can explain it in a way that makes sense :???: .
First, the red things are screw-type anchors 48" long with a 5" "auger" plate at the bottom. In the clay-based soils around here, they tend to be quite solid. To simplify what all that wire does, try to look at that corner brace assembly as two separate single braces. The one wire that runs from the top of the "brace" post to the bottom of the "corner" post is still the main brace wire. The shorter one from the anchor to the top of the corner post keeps it from "jacking" up under the pressure. The longer piece running up from the anchor to the brace post acts as an auxiliary brace wire. When each of these is tensioned evenly, they work together to create a very solid brace, especially for 45 degree turns like the one in the picture. Those non-right angle corners are particularly troublesome because the corner post eventually leans "into" the corner under the strain of the two directions of pull. This system has eliminated that problem anyway

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I don't always use the anchors--some customers want them and others think they're a waste. For one customer, I have done some of his fences with them and others without. Just recently, I compared the difference and the fences put in nearly 5 years ago with anchored braces are still fiddle string tight, while the ones without anchors have slacked a little over time. Other custom fence builders in this area anchor every brace this way...no matter how short the length of fence.