Electric fence energiser housing

We're building a small cabinet in the Orchard to provide security and weather protection for our new electric fence energiser. Today we excavated the base and laid a small reinforced concrete slab to provide a base for the housing cabinet. The base is not large, approximately 100 x 60 cms, so we mixed the concrete by hand from ballast and cement powder (6:1 by volume). Sam's Steps by the river provided a convenient access to fill our water buckets.  The warm humid weather and summer flies buzzing around did not make this work a pleasant experience. Once the base slab has cured we'll build a lockable housing for the energiser and its battery. There will be some additional security features to deter thieves.

After the work had been done I checked the orchard and found four young sheep lurking in a far corner close to the railway. They'd knocked over the temporary electric fence posts  to gain access to our woodland. I spent a couple of hours installing some heavy duty wooden posts, driven firmly into the ground and set up a six strand electric fence to deter these four legged marauders.

Edit 24/06/2016
I found sheep in the orchard again this morning. They'd pushed the six strand electric fence aside. These must be some mighty hungry sheep if they are prepared to tolerate the powerful 3 joule shock this fence gives. I think the problem is they are dumb juvenile sheep not yet "trained" to recognise electric fences. The older sheep steer clear once they realise it is an electric fence.

I've now ripped out the extended section of the electric fence adjacent to the railway line and replaced it with 30 metres of wire stock fence mounted on wooden posts driven in at 10 foot intervals.

I removed the plywood shuttering from the base of the energiser shed. The concrete slab is looking good.

Edit 28/06/2016
The installation of wire stock fence seems to have worked, there have been no further sheep invasions since I upgraded the fence to a permanent structure. Last night I added an insulator mounted electrified high tensile steel wire top strand above the wire stock fence to enhance the sheep resistance. I'd been trying to avoid a permanent fence as we still have to fell some trees in that area, but it seems to be the only solution to deal with the sheep.

The battle with the sheep continues

The problems with sheep from the neighbouring field continue at the Turnditch Orchard. At lunchtime I found several sheep on the orchard. They'd found yet another route into the field.  Most of the fruit trees have now suffered substantial damage from Farmer White's flock. I must admit my patience is now wearing thin, I wish he'd do something to contain his animals, it is after all his responsibility and not  mine. The sheep seem to be very hungry. 

Damage to the plum tree

Leaves stripped from one of the apple trees

One of our young plum trees has lost most of its leaves and has had branches broken by the sheep. I'll have to prune them back to avoid infection in the tree. For some reason the apple trees have fared the worst. We've effectively lost two year's growth on the trees and will probably have to buy replacements and replant. 

I've found their latest point of entry, via two sections of wire strand fence and through woodland. The electric fence has been extended to cover this latest breach. It seems the theft of the fence energiser has had unexpected consequences.

The latest invasion by the sheep

Change of plan.

We'd planned to remove the electric fence at the Turnditch orchard. The theft of the fence energiser had just accelerated the plan. However the sheep from the White's farm have been too successful at finding ways into the orchard and have caused a lot of damage to the fruit trees. I'd even had phone calls from helpful neighbours who'd tried to chase the sheep out of the orchard.

We reinstated the electric fence yesterday with an expensive new fence energiser. It was warm and humid weather when I entered the adjoining field armed with brush cutter to trim back the vegetation which had swamped the electric fence. After a couple of hours hard work my clothes were sodden with sweat, but the work was done. I guess I had to clear about 250 sq metres. 

Now any malcontent sheep will receive a powerful shock if they try to invade our orchard. 

Crime in sleepy Turnditch

Crime visits the sleepy village of Turnditch, or rather the orchard site we're developing. We'd installed an electric fence between our site and the adjoining farmer's field The purpose was to stop sheep coming into the orchard and destroying the young fruit trees. This electric fence also had the side benefit in that stopped the farmer's sheep wandering on to the Ecclesbourne Valley railway. Those sheep are not our responsibility, but it cost nothing to have extended the protection, so it was a courtesy.

This evening we visited the site to charge the battery which powers the fence. When we arrived we found that someone has stolen the fence energiser unit. We'd hidden this unit out of sight under a builder's bucket, but anyone following the fence line would be able to find it. It was positioned in such a way that a deliberate premeditated activity is needed to locate the unit. 

It is a red coloured Hotshock A15 energiser worth £137. and was equipped with an iron stand post.

Ironically the thief left the lead acid battery in place. It was worth more than the energiser, but weighing in at 20 Kgs was less attractive. This crime will be reported to the police so will be included in the official figures for the locality.

There was also damage to the street side stock fence where someone has cut through the wire stock fence to gain access to the orchard. It is quite a distance from where the energiser was located, but this criminal damage is probably related to the theft. This will be reported as a crime. The combination of the two activities means it is possible for the sheep to gain access to the road. 

Hole cut in roadside stock fence

By the way, the unit is forensically marked. Should anyone be daft enough to buy it they'll find out the hard way such things are traceable.

Planning for fence removal at the orchard

A couple of years ago we had a hedging professional on the orchard site re-laying the boundary hedge between our plot and the adjoining field. Previous owners had neglected the hedge over the years and had allowed the Blackthorn to run wild. At 11 GBP per metre it was not an insignificant investment. We needed to protect hedge from hungry sheep in its early stages of regrowing. We also needed to fill in some gaps to keep marauding sheep away from the young fruit trees. There was a real risk of damage by sheep to both the fruit trees and the relaid hedge as an earlier Blog post can attest. 

To provide this protection we installed a semi-permanent electric fence just inside in the boundary of the neighbouring field. It had driven wooden fence posts, with insulators screwed into them. The fence part was constructed with four strands of high tensile electric fence wire. The top strand was polypropylene rope with stainless steel strands interwoven. There's almost one kilometre of wiring.

The electric fence has worked out well and the hedge no longer needs any protection. The fruit trees could be damaged by the sheep, but the regrown hedge, plus some wire stockfence, is now providing an effective barrier.

The time has come to remove the electric fence. This should be a simple task were it not for the high tensile fence wire. The wire is very springy and easily tangles if not managed carefully. When delivered it was just a coil of wire contained by some soft iron wire wrapped around the coils. We had to carefully unwind the coils to avoid tangles as we laid the fence.

To help manage the recovery of the fence wire we've been busy in the workshop fabricating wooden drums/bobbins to receive the recovered fence wire. They are about one foot (30 cm) in diameter and about six inches (15 cm) wide. We've recently taken delivery of a large bandsaw in the workshop. This machine made the process of cutting circular disks of plywood for the bobbins an easy task. Air powered nail guns improved the accuracy and speed of nailing the bits together. While it is possible to buy old used plastic cable bobbins or use some old electric power cable cardboard bobbins it is quite satisfying to just build them from scrap bits of wood. It certainly is much more fun than commuting to a city office and spending the time doing boring paperwork and tedious phone conferences.

Soon we'll be drawing back the wire from the electric fences. We'll recover the gripples we used to tension the wire. The fence posts will be lifted and reused for wooden fence building further down in the orchard in the part we've yet to recover from the scrub land. The fence insulators will be recovered and stored for later use.

One lesson from all of this is that if you are considering buying a plot of land for an orchard be sure to check the state of the boundary fences. Estimate the cost of restoring the fences, hedges and walls to a good condition. It takes time and money to fix them. Sometimes your neighbours will show no interest in funding long term fixes for the fences.

The return of the sheep.

It was a busy week in the Orchard at Turnditch. Sheep have been allowed into the adjacent field to graze. Unfortunately they do seem attracted to the lush green grass in the orchard. They had found a way through the old broken fences of the plot at the thin end of the orchard. We'd prepared for this with an additional temporary wire stock fence across the untamed part of the orchard. However the sheep found a way via the Ecclesbourne railway track to access the woodland embankment. While it is the farmer's responsibility under common law to enclose his sheep to prevent them damaging other property, we had to take action to protect the embankment.

Fortunately we had a spare set of electric fence equipment, tape and posts, so we were able to create an additional barrier  of electrified tape at the railway end of the orchard and up the embankment. So far it has been wholly successful at repelling the woolly invaders. Meanwhile we have been removing the year's overgrown vegetation from the old electric fence using a powered brush cutter. The old fence will be re-energised tomorrow once the warning notices are replaced.

Some sheep remain on the verges of the railway. We've phoned both the farmer and the railway management to warn them of this situation.

Speaking of invaders on the orchard we discovered that people have been cutting back some branches on the far end of the orchard embankment. We presume it is volunteers from the Ecclesbourne Railway making an unauthorised path through our land. Let's hope they don't try to climb the new electric fence now guarding that area.  It is energised to 8000 volts which is very painful but safe to touch. We have posted a warning notice close to where they appear to access the embankment from the road.

There is a long standing informal agreement we allow the neighbouring farmer access through to his field by the track next to the riverbank. He'd lost the key we'd given him for the road gate padlock, but we gave him another last week so he could get to his sheep. Yesterday we found he'd been through with a heavy tractor which was not too unreasonable, but unfortunately the weight of the machine has damaged the soft riverbank when he manoeuvred too close to the edge. We'll need to drive some wooden piles into the bank to reinforce it and prevent further damage. In the longer term we will grow some willow spilings in that part of the bank to provide strengthening.

Electric fence progress

I spent a few hours in the orchard today to complete the main part of the installation of the electric fence. There's now five stands of fence wire installed and correctly tensioned mounted on suitable insulators. In total there is over half a kilometre of  wiring, 60 insulators  and 25 wire knot joints. Feeding the high tensile wire was really hard work because I didn't have the correct "bobbin" to roll out the wire. Instead I had to work from the coil of wire. The coil was constantly threatening to explode into a birds nest of wire tangle. I had to feed each inch of wire carefully whilst keeping a tight grasp on the main wire coil.

The Gripple line tensioning tool (Torq) worked superbly and made the job of tensioning the wire really straight forward. Tomorrow I'll be ordering the lead/acid  batteries to power the fence.

Electric fence at Turnditch Orchard

Edit 25/10/2014

The electric fence is connected and live as of 5 pm today. The connection process was straightforward as a consequence of the careful planning work and preparatory effort. The "hot" wire strands are interconnected at various points along the length to ensure maximum connectivity and to minimise any power leakage, The measured voltage on all strands is 7000 volts. The bottom strand will not normally be connected to the power, but will be configured as a ground wire.

Edit 15/01/2015
We were beginning to wonder if we'd wasted money and effort on the electric fence. However when we drove past the site today and noticed the sheep were back in the adjoining farmer's field. The fence seems to be keeping the sheep out of our orchard. Yippee!

Busy in the Orchard today

I spent most of the day in the orchard driving fence posts into the ground. I had to dig holes a metre deep for the larger posts and used a 20 kilogram post driver for the other wooden posts.  I covered 120 metres run of fencing. This will be used for the electric fence. By the end of the day the post driver was feeling very heavy. The next step is to cut back the under growth with a brush cutter before I install the insulators on the posts. I'm creating a six strand fence.

Update Sunday 20th. 
Yesterday I had a couple of hour's hard work to cut a swathe through the weeds and blackthorn saplings. These had sprung up on the neighbours field side of the hedge following last winter's hedging work. There's now a 120 by 2 metre strip free of weeds along the route of the electric fence. 

Today I installed the insulators on the fence posts and both the top and bottom strands of the fence. The bottom strand is high tensile galvanised steel wire it will not be electrified, but will be grounded to earth, The top strand is white polypropylene electric fence rope of approximately 7 mm diameter. It will be electrified to 8000 volts. I've chosen this to make the fence obvious to anyone passing close by to the fence. Once the Gripple fence tool arrives I'll install the other strands of the fence using 2 mm alloy wire. This wire is specially designed for the job with a very low electrical resistance to reduce voltage drop along the length of the fence. However the thin grey wire is difficult to see in poor light conditions,  hence the obvious white top strand.

I've spent a while this evening practising the knots used for fencing wire attachment of the insulators mounted on the end posts. Along the length of the fence the gap between the wooden posts is about 12 metres. I'll be placing lightweight plastic step-in posts between the wooden posts to act as wire spreaders. These will discourage sheep etc from pushing through the fence strands.

Fence is broken

As I drove past the orchard site yesterday I noticed the top wire of the new fence at the roadside was slack. I stopped to inspect it. At the lower end someone or something had pulled back a couple of metres of wire. When I followed the length of the fence, about 100 metres, I found a break in the wire. It looks like a stress break so I'm not sure what caused it. The fence after all is only one year old. Such are the trials of land ownership.

I effected a quick temporary repair and pulled the wire back into place by hand. It will need some proper tensioning and a permanent repair. The fence has a 15 year guarantee, but it seems a bit mean to call the fencer out just for a single wire break. 

As it happens I had been driving back from Lester Lowes with a pair of 8 foot  by 6 inch fence posts. I'd purchased them to form the end posts for the electric fence which I'm planning on the other side of the field. I needed to have a method of tensioning and fixing the high tensile conductor wires for the fence at each end. Last night I've decided to invest in a Gripple Torq wrench and some Gripple fixings. I can use the tool for the fence repair, the electric fence installation and also for future fence repairs. I'll no doubt do some damage to fences when I start coppicing trees on the embankment. and river bank.

Edit 21st Oct 2014

The Gripple tool arrived today. After checking a training video on YouTube I went to the orchard to fix the fence using Gripple fixings. I repaired and retensioned the fence in less than five minutes. It gave a neat strong repair.

Electric fence at the orchard

We're planning to install an electric fence at the orchard during the next two weeks. It will be positioned outside of the recently laid hedge on the field side of the orchard. The wire fence at the road side will not be electrified. The fence will be of a semi-permanent construction running for approximately 100 metres, with wooden posts spaced at 10-15 metres. There will be  temporary green plastic push-in posts supporting the wire between the wooden posts. Once the hedge has grown strong enough to repel browsing farm animals the fence will be removed.

The fence will be built using five strands of galvanised braided wire (1.6 mm) and a top strand of white poly-electric fence rope. The fence design is is aimed to prevent sheep from damaging the hedge or the fruit trees in the orchard. They did a lot of damage last winter.

The fence will have a powerful charge capable of penetrating the insulating wool of the sheep, probably in the region of 8000V. It is about twice the power needed for a electric fence configured for horses/cows. While the charge on the fence is not dangerous it would be very unpleasant for you if you touch the fence and get a shock. It would be similarly unpleasant for a dog.

We'll be labelling the fence according to the regulations. It will be possible to access it from the public footpath if you wander off the path and trespass into the farmer's field. However it will not affect access to the public path.

The legislation sets out specific safety regulations which must be adhered to.  These are as follows:

• Every electric fence must carry a suitable warning sign:
  • The sign should have the size of at least 100mm x 200mm.
  • It is recommended that the basic colour of the sign be yellow with black inscription and should use the words "ELECTRIC FENCE".
  • The inscription shall be permanent, inscribed on both sides and have a height of at least 25mm.
• An electric fence when installed in such a position that members of the public might reasonably be expected to touch it, such as along a public road or highway or as a boundary fence, should be identified by a number of warning signs (as explained above) which must be clamped to the fence wires at intervals recommended to be of approximately 10m to 50m, but not exceeding 90m.
• A clear warning notice should also be fitted at every point where persons may have ready access to the electric wires, rope or tape. The notice should bear the words 'LIVE WIRES' in block letters not less than 13mm high, the letters should be red on a white background and the size of each notice should be not less than 62mm x 50mm overall.