Welcome Back!
I hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day weekend to spend with family or friends! Thanks to all veterans who served our great country where we are still free to build our own paradise.
This is a paid post for the fence building guide. I’m working on a free article about raising dairy and meat goats which will hopefully drop very soon!
Today we’re covering the process of estimating the materials needed for your fence project. We’ll use this list to estimate the total cost of our fencing project.
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Fence Estimating Basics
Estimating is the process of determining the quantity of all required materials to build a project. This will consist of a material breakdown for the entire job including posts, concrete, wire, and and more.
With this breakdown you will figure out the quantities of each item on the list. From there you can easily go to the different material suppliers in your area for pricing. With the pricing, you can determine the total cost of the job. This material breakdown with quantities will be helpful when you go to the supply store to purchase your materials.
Estimating is a very important step in fence construction, especially if you are doing the work for someone else as a job. Your customers will want to know how much the job is going to cost. You would also need to come up with a labor hours estimate in that case, we’ll talk about estimating labor later.
The beauty of estimating a job for yourself is it doesn’t have to be perfect. If you end up underestimating by a few feet on the fencing material, it’s not a huge deal, you’ll just end up back at the building supply store for more materials. If you end up a little over on some of your estimates you’ll be left with extra materials for your next project win-win either way if you ask me!
Layout
Before we go into the estimation process, I need to cover the layout a little more. Finding the property line, and making straight fences is very important. I mentioned last week finding the deed/plot to your property. This is extremely helpful when laying out your fences because it’s how you determine the property line. It also helps you to make sure you’re not building fences on someone else’s property (like the government on their right of way for roads).
If you can’t find the deed, you still need to make sure your fences are straight and square if possible. You can pull measurements off of physical points like another fence, a building, or a drive way to make your fence straight and parallel. It’s best to have another person to help you with the layout of your fence. You’ll be doing a lot of measuring and it makes the job go much easier and faster with an extra set of hands!
For instance, if you are building a fence along a road side, it’s crucial that the fence run straight and parallel to the road side. You should be able to look up the easement of the road way to determine the distance from the center of the road to the edge of the road easement, or “right of way” and your property line.
Now, you don’t necessarily have to put your fence on the property line, you can move your fence anywhere inside your property, but you can’t put the fence inside the right of way. For instance, there may be a large ditch near the road. This would make it hard to mow the grass on on the outside of your fence, so you may decide to move your fence several feet inside your property away from the ditch to give you room to mow the outside of your fence line.
In the sample plot above, on the left side you can see it says “60’ ROW”. This means the owner’s property line runs thirty feet from the center of the road. Therefore, if you want to put a fence along that road way, you must measure from the center of the road 30 feet, this is the Right of Way. Now, you know where your fence needs to be, and if you want you can move the fence line further inside your property. In this case, you can not put the fence less than 30’ from the center of the road.
To layout your fence line, I recommend using T-posts. They are sturdy and allow you to pull a tight string so that you can get a straight fence. You will probably get by with using 6’ t posts on most of your jobs, just make sure you buy the solid steel ones and not the cheaper flimsier ones.
You’ll place a T-post at the beginning of where you want your fence line to start, somewhere inside your property line (outside of the right of way). You’ll measure from the road or other set physical structure, using the 100’ tape measure I listed last week to the t-post you just set.
Then, you will walk to the other end of your fence row and measure the same distance from the road or physical structure and put another T-post. You now have your first fence line marked. Do this for all of your fence lines to layout your fence.
If your property line has a curve to it, you’ll have to decide if you want your fence to run along the curve of the road or property line. You could set the fence line back off of the road/property line enough so that you can just run a straight line. Same thing, you just measure from the road, to your point.
See below, the property line follows a round about right of way. In this situation, it may make more sense to set your fence line further back off of the road way and make a straight run of fence. You would measure off of the right way to a spot where you can make a straight line, and then measure the same distance on the other end. (black straight line added by me)
The point is to make sure your fence is nice and straight, it will be noticeable from the road when you pass it every day! And if you are building fences with wire, you pretty much have to run straight lines for it to be built properly. You can make slight bends, but it increases the cost of the project, as discussed below.
Same thing goes for a fence line running perpendicular to a road, you will need to measure one end of the fence from a certain point (established by your deed/plot), set a t post, and then walk to the other end and measure the same distance to put your t post to establish a straight line.
Now let’s move on to the estimation process.
Step 1
The first step to fence estimation is measuring the layout of your fence. If you’ve already marked your corners with t-posts, you can measure the distances by hand with a tape measure. It’s best to have two people to help with the measuring process.
One person simply holds the tape measure on the post while the other walks out to the next corner post. If it’s more than 100’, use some marking spray paint and put a mark at 100’, then walk down another 100’ while the other person holds the other end on your mark, and make a mark. Measure until you reach the next corner. Write down all of your measurements for all fence lines.
Another method of measuring your fence lines is to download a distance measuring app for your phone. You can use these apps for rough distance estimation, but you may still want to measure the area by hand.
I use the app called “FieldAreaMeasure” it’s a free app, but I’m sure there are many to choose from. With these apps, you can pull up your location on the map and place pins where you would like to measure. This will give you the distance between each run of fence.
There is also a feature to use the GPS of your location to place a pin, so you could walk out in the field or yard and place a pin at the point where you are standing on the map and measure the distances that way.
Write down the measurements of each run of your fence on your sketch. Now you know your fence distances.
Step 2
Next, we need to know what type of fence we are going to build. Different lengths and types of fence require different bracing techniques. We’ll be building our fences in this guide based on the NRCS specification guide.
I’ll cover the basics from the guide on barbed wire, electric high tensile, and woven wire fencing here.
Bracing
The diagram above shows the different bracing requirements. These requirements are crucial because long stretches of fence add significant tension to the brace assemblies on each end. The more tension, the beefier bracing assembly is required.
Start paying attention to livestock fencing as you drive on trips. You’ll notice some fences are nice, straight, and well built. You’ll also notice fences that are sagging, falling over, and poorly built. Usually the poorly built fences were not properly braced.
Per the NRCS spec, fences that are over 166’ long, it’s best to use a double h brace at the corners. Fence runs that are less than 330’ could get by with a single H brace assembly on each corner with a single H brace in the middle. The H brace in the middle splits the fence run into lengths shorter than 166’.
It’s up to you if you would rather do single H braces at the corners and put a single H brace at 166’ or put in double H braces and run 660’. Depending on how long your fence is, it may make sense to run double H braces. Putting in single H braces on a long run will require more H braces in the middle of your fence.
Every H brace requires work and material, setting posts, building the brace, cutting and tying off the fence, pulling it tight, etc, so keep this in mind. Also, keep in mind the extra costs and labor associated with the double h brace design, more posts, more holes, more labor etc.
You can also see that an H brace is required at the tops and bottoms of hills and at turns in the fence. This is very important to keep your fence tight and standing properly for many years. Woven wire fence will not run over steep hills or sharp turns without a brace at the top and bottom of hills or at turns.
This diagram gives you an idea on how to construct an H brace and the labor involved.
Posts
H brace posts must be minimum 5” in diameter and driven 3’ into the ground. So they will need to be at least 8’ long. The horizontal brace posts must be a minimum of 4” diameter and 8’ long.
The maximum distance between line posts is 16.5 feet. However, most woven wire and barbed wire fences with steel t-post use 10 foot spacing. If you are building high tensile electric fencing 16.5 feet is acceptable.
You can use wooden line posts or you can use t-posts. This is up to you, but the costs are considerably more if you choose wooden posts. A wooden post must be set 30” into the ground. This requires work digging or drilling the holes, setting them, and tamping the dirt back in around them. The cost of a wooden post is about twice as much as a steel T-Post. T-posts are easier to handle, and can be driven in by hand much easier.
To meet the NRCS spec, every 50 feet, a wooden post is required if using T-posts. There are attachments for skid steer loaders that can drive the wooden posts in the ground greatly reducing the labor, however, you would need to hire or buy the equipment. Farmer uses T-posts on all the fences around here and have never had a problem, it’s a great workout!
Setting wooden post requirements are as follows:
If hand set, all backfilled material shall be thoroughly tamped in 4” layers. Post holes shall be at least 6” larger than the diameter or side dimension of the posts. Synthetic posts are to be installed as specified by the manufacturer. If concrete backfill is used, the concrete must be pre-mixed, and worked into place up to the ground surface. No stress shall be applied to posts set in concrete for at least 24 hours after the concrete has set.
The size of the hole is important so you can get a tamping tool in around the posts. I will say, I have tamped posts in per this spec and still had issues with the posts moving when I pulled my woven wire fence. I recommend using concrete in your post holes. This adds cost but it’s worth it.
**Note**
Steel pipe/Structural steel can definitely be used when building brace assemblies. It is a great idea because wooden posts have a tendency to rot over time. Steel braces require welding and coating which will increase cost of the job. Properly designed and built, steel brace assemblies can last significantly longer than wooden posts.
Wooden Ranch Style Fencing
Wooden ranch style fencing is more straight forward. You don’t have to worry about H braces, or distance requirements. You will need to place your posts at the lengths of the boards you buy.
Again the costs are considerably more for this type of fence due to the large amount of posts required, increased labor, and higher cost of materials. There are different designs for wooden ranch style fencing. The easiest/cheapest way to build a wooden fence is to insert a square 4x4 post into the ground at 12’ “on center” spacing. Attach 2”x10” boards 12’ long to the posts with lag bolts.
It would look something like this. However, this picture shows fancy 6x6 posts. The weak point of failure for this design is the screws holding the horizontal boards to the posts. You will have periodic maintenance with this type of fence.
Another popular design is “split rail” where the boards are notched and inserted into the posts. This design removes the weak point of screws or bolts holding the horizontal members to the posts. However, this design will still require maintenance at some point due to the nature of the design.
(The diagram below is using 8’ board lengths.)
Sketch/Layout
Now that we have our distances and know our design requirements. We can go back to our sketch and fill everything in. You now know you need an H brace at each corner, and if you’re running a length over 166 feet you’ll need a double H brace.
You know where you want your gates, so each side of the gate will need a single or double H brace. You know where your hills and curves are which will require a single or double H brace. And you know your post spacing requirements.
You can now draw your fenced area and begin to fill in the details of where each post will go. Mark your gates and what length they will be. Mark the number of t-posts and wooden posts along the fence. Fill in the distances of each fence run.
Woven wire is 48” high, so you only need to figure out the perimeter of your fence minus the gates to determine the length of wire you will need.
Barbed wire and high tensile electric wire lengths will be determined by how many strands you want to run. Take the perimeter length minus gates and multiply by the number of strands you want. (see chart in the NRCS guide here for strand number requirements)
Material Breakdown
Now, using your sketch you’ll make a material break down for wire fencing as follows: (fill in your estimated quantities for each line)
Wooden Posts (5/6” dia. x 8’ long, treated)
Concrete (if needed, at least 1 bag per post)
Brace Posts (4/5” dia. x 8’ Long, Treated)
T-Posts (6’ long, steel)
Wooden Line Posts (4/5” dia. x 8’ Long, Treated)
Woven wire/Barbed Wire/High Tensile
Brace pins
12-1/2 gauge high tensile wire (for h braces)
Fence Staples (1-1/2” galvanized)
Gates
Electric Fence Charger (we’ll talk about these later)
Electric Fence hardware (we’ll talk about these later)
Wooden ranch style fencing breakdown would look something like this:
Wooden posts (4” x 4” or 6”x6” treated 8’ long)
Concrete (if needed, at least 1 bag per post)
Wooden Boards (2x10 12’ long treated)
Gates
Lag Bolts/Screws (will need a ton!)
We covered a whole lot of ground here!
We’ll come back next week to put this estimate together and get prices on our materials.
WAGMI
Farmer