Introduction

A friend of mine has a fence at the bottom of his garden made from six interwoven fence panels each 6ft × 6ft (1.8m × 1.8m). They are erected on a three feet high bank of soil. The panels are fixed to 3in (75mm) posts dug into the bank of soil. Over a two year period the posts snapped one by one, at or just below ground level, due to wind pressure and rot. This has left the fence with broken timber fence posts throughout.

His neighbour on the next street has a garden beyond the bank of soil. So work done on the bank to support the fence isn’t on his land.

Because they snapped one at a time the other posts held the fence up but the panels attached to the broken timber fence posts were floppy and moved about in the wind begging to be repaired. So I repaired it only to find another snapped a few weeks later.Over time they all snapped and had to be repaired by the same or similar method. One end post has a simple horizontal stay going from midway up the post to a tree about two feet behind and to one side of it.

Ideally the posts would be replaced but I offered to do a quick fix as each one broke. I attached two diagonal stays from halfway up each post and two horizontal stays near the bottom. These stays cannot be seen from my friend’s garden because they are behind his fence. They have lasted for a year on all the posts except for one.