My wife and I just finished a 4 day project installing an underground dog fence. I wish I had someone to ask questions before I started so I figured I'd post a little of what I learned and maybe it can help the next person out.
A few months ago, my wife decided she wanted a dog. Several of my neighbors have buried fences with shock collars and their dogs are never out of their yards. I know tons of internet sites say that buried wire fences don't work, but my neighbors results speak for themselves. I've never seen any of their dogs where they weren't supposed to be. Anyway, we decided that a buried wire fence was the way to go. The pros always use a heavier (#14) wire and we wanted to fence a larger area so that's what I decided to go with.
Looking around, it seemed like there was only one player in the do-it-yourself game with heavy wire in their kit and that's http://extremedogfence.com . Considering the effort and the fact that I still want to be using the wire I buried 20 years from now, I bought the Max grade kit. They also offer a Pro grade kit and the only difference is the insulation on the Max grade kit is a little heavier. Considering the work involved and the fact that the kit was only $70 more, I went for it. It's $70 whether you buy the stock kit with 500' of wire or 10,000' of wire.
I personally ordered 3500' of wire. I hoped that it would come on one big spool to reduce my connections, but they shipped one 2000' spool and one 1500' spool. Easy enough, I have one extra splice. By the way, I put a concrete cap block on top of my splices, buried so that it just sticks out of the ground. That'll let me find them later, but still mow over them with a bush hog. I also unwound an extra couple of feet of wire for repair at the splices and folded them neatly and stuck them under the buried block. One more note on buying extras. The kit comes with a 50' roll of pre-twisted wire (wire that doesn't put out the shock signal). I needed 100' and hoped that it would come as one roll, but they stuck two 50' spools in the kit. In hind sight, I would not have ordered the extra 50' and just twisted the normal boundry wire myself to reduce splices.
So, how does one go about burying that much wire? One of these does the trick.https://www.sunbeltrentals.com/searchresults?search=&keyword=cable trencher
It works like this:
Anyway, if I had one piece of advice to give, I'd tell you to wait until the summer time when the soil is nice and dry. Unfortunately, it rained one of our four days and it doesn't work nears as well in wet soils. It constantly clogs. In dry soil, it works exactly as well and as fast as they show in the above videos. I worried about tree roots, but they weren't a problem. It cuts right through them, even large oak roots.
One more thing about the trencher, when it clogs with clay mud, it's a pain to clear. I ened up cutting a piece of steel 2 1/4" X 30" for clearing the mud out. I sharpened one end to a one sided wedge. You'll be tempted to use a long handled screwdriver, but it's way worth the time to make something that works better. Even better would be to only do it when the soil isn't mucky. Also, the trencher comes with a little pole thing for holding spools of wire. it wasn't near long enough for the large spools I received, so I cut a piece of 3/4" conduit and stuck it over the spool holder. It then held large spools and worked perfectly. When I return the machine tomorrow, I'm gong to just leave the piece of conduit on there for the next person that rents it. I'm sure any kind of pipe would work, I just happended to have a stick of EMT to use.
We spent a day clearing a trail through the woods, a day in the rain, and two days burying wire. One day would have been enough for burying the wire except for the wet soil. We still have to go back and bury a few sections by hand where the machine left clumps of mud next to the trench and wire.
We did cross our gravel driveway. I didn't think far enough ahead on that and was stuck trying to figure out how to get a piece of conduit in the ground for the wire to go through when one end of the wire was already buried 1000' and the other end of the wire was still spooled on the spool 1000'. In the end, I thought putting the wire in conduit was important enough to unroll the entire 1000' spool along the path where we would be burying the wire. We then pulled 20' piece of PVC pipe down the whole length of wire until we got back to the driveway crossing and buried it and the wire. It was just as easy, if not easier, trenching the wire in when it was layed out on the ground as it was with it coming off a spool.
One more note on using the trencher. Going up a hill is easy. Going down a hill is easy. Going across a hill is very very very difficult. The articulating wheels on the back of the trencher makes it want to fall down' the hill. It even got away from me once and tipped over. Avoid going across a hill if you can. If you can't, less wet dirt will make it a lot lot easier.
Overall, we're still glad we did it ourselves. We saved thousands of dollars. We spent less than 1K including the rental. We buried somewhere around 3200' of wire and now our pupply has a little over 9 acres to roam on. If the controller craps out, I can replace it and still use the wire, hopefully for a long time. If you read this far and you only take one thing away, let it be to do this when the dirt is not mucky wet.
-Adrian
A few months ago, my wife decided she wanted a dog. Several of my neighbors have buried fences with shock collars and their dogs are never out of their yards. I know tons of internet sites say that buried wire fences don't work, but my neighbors results speak for themselves. I've never seen any of their dogs where they weren't supposed to be. Anyway, we decided that a buried wire fence was the way to go. The pros always use a heavier (#14) wire and we wanted to fence a larger area so that's what I decided to go with.
Looking around, it seemed like there was only one player in the do-it-yourself game with heavy wire in their kit and that's http://extremedogfence.com . Considering the effort and the fact that I still want to be using the wire I buried 20 years from now, I bought the Max grade kit. They also offer a Pro grade kit and the only difference is the insulation on the Max grade kit is a little heavier. Considering the work involved and the fact that the kit was only $70 more, I went for it. It's $70 whether you buy the stock kit with 500' of wire or 10,000' of wire.
I personally ordered 3500' of wire. I hoped that it would come on one big spool to reduce my connections, but they shipped one 2000' spool and one 1500' spool. Easy enough, I have one extra splice. By the way, I put a concrete cap block on top of my splices, buried so that it just sticks out of the ground. That'll let me find them later, but still mow over them with a bush hog. I also unwound an extra couple of feet of wire for repair at the splices and folded them neatly and stuck them under the buried block. One more note on buying extras. The kit comes with a 50' roll of pre-twisted wire (wire that doesn't put out the shock signal). I needed 100' and hoped that it would come as one roll, but they stuck two 50' spools in the kit. In hind sight, I would not have ordered the extra 50' and just twisted the normal boundry wire myself to reduce splices.
So, how does one go about burying that much wire? One of these does the trick.https://www.sunbeltrentals.com/searchresults?search=&keyword=cable trencher
It works like this:
Anyway, if I had one piece of advice to give, I'd tell you to wait until the summer time when the soil is nice and dry. Unfortunately, it rained one of our four days and it doesn't work nears as well in wet soils. It constantly clogs. In dry soil, it works exactly as well and as fast as they show in the above videos. I worried about tree roots, but they weren't a problem. It cuts right through them, even large oak roots.
One more thing about the trencher, when it clogs with clay mud, it's a pain to clear. I ened up cutting a piece of steel 2 1/4" X 30" for clearing the mud out. I sharpened one end to a one sided wedge. You'll be tempted to use a long handled screwdriver, but it's way worth the time to make something that works better. Even better would be to only do it when the soil isn't mucky. Also, the trencher comes with a little pole thing for holding spools of wire. it wasn't near long enough for the large spools I received, so I cut a piece of 3/4" conduit and stuck it over the spool holder. It then held large spools and worked perfectly. When I return the machine tomorrow, I'm gong to just leave the piece of conduit on there for the next person that rents it. I'm sure any kind of pipe would work, I just happended to have a stick of EMT to use.
We spent a day clearing a trail through the woods, a day in the rain, and two days burying wire. One day would have been enough for burying the wire except for the wet soil. We still have to go back and bury a few sections by hand where the machine left clumps of mud next to the trench and wire.
We did cross our gravel driveway. I didn't think far enough ahead on that and was stuck trying to figure out how to get a piece of conduit in the ground for the wire to go through when one end of the wire was already buried 1000' and the other end of the wire was still spooled on the spool 1000'. In the end, I thought putting the wire in conduit was important enough to unroll the entire 1000' spool along the path where we would be burying the wire. We then pulled 20' piece of PVC pipe down the whole length of wire until we got back to the driveway crossing and buried it and the wire. It was just as easy, if not easier, trenching the wire in when it was layed out on the ground as it was with it coming off a spool.
One more note on using the trencher. Going up a hill is easy. Going down a hill is easy. Going across a hill is very very very difficult. The articulating wheels on the back of the trencher makes it want to fall down' the hill. It even got away from me once and tipped over. Avoid going across a hill if you can. If you can't, less wet dirt will make it a lot lot easier.
Overall, we're still glad we did it ourselves. We saved thousands of dollars. We spent less than 1K including the rental. We buried somewhere around 3200' of wire and now our pupply has a little over 9 acres to roam on. If the controller craps out, I can replace it and still use the wire, hopefully for a long time. If you read this far and you only take one thing away, let it be to do this when the dirt is not mucky wet.
-Adrian
