Thanks
I’ve tested my fence this way 
. All good. But hubby has since bought a voltage tester. Mine is not as powerful as the once you are talking about.
I’m adding the battery info on the battery and solar panel I bought in case anybody wants to just electrify fence to keep back yard critters away.
Zareba 5 Mile Battery Powered Electric Fence Charger
EDC5M-Z Specs
- DC-powered 6- or 12-volt battery
- 0.25 Output Joules
- Use on Up to 5 Miles of Fence
- Includes battery hookup line
- For Use with Horses, Cattle, Pigs, Sheep, Goats
Newpowa 10 Watts 12 Volts Monocrystalline Solar Panel 10W 12V High Efficiency Module RV Marine Boat Off Grid
ExpertPower 12v 7ah Rechargeable Sealed Lead Acid Battery
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I took a pic the other day of the lower portion of the coon/possum fence we put up. We plan for the hot wire will go directly above the lower fence screening.
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That’s a lot of work, looks great ! I would expect a climber wouldn’t be able to avoid contact with the hot wire, I like it.
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Really nice installation! Both your fence and @AndySmith charging system. This same general (but much smaller, more "homesteady) set-up has worked well for us. Our electric fence is solar but runs from a buried wire from an outbuilding with a panel/inverter/battery system. Here’s a description from an older “electric fence materials” thread (Electric fence material - #9 by DanBlass):
“We have two electric wires, both hot. The bottom one is on a 2” insulator at 48". About 8" above that one is the second wire on a 4" insulator. The thought is if a racoon somehow “steps” or reaches over the first wire they’re more apt to hit the next wire being out a bit farther. They’re both on a 6 ft fence which is the ground. Poultry netting on field fence or 2"x4" welded wire fence up to the wire, field or poultry fence above. We have old and new fence surrounding our acre garden/orchard. Old is on cedar posts and that area has some wire or rebar “staples” over the bottom fence wire into the ground, just for insurance for good ground. The new fence is on steel posts so that part is well grounded. There is a wire from the fence to a regular ground rod at the fencer (regular farm fencer).
For years the bottom electric was at 2 ft and that was a real pain keeping the weeds/grass down to keep from shorting out the fence. When we expanded and redid our fence this spring we put the bottom electric wire at 4 ft and that was a whole lot better. This has worked well. Confirmed, unfortunately, last month when our dependable mouser cat decided to climb a fence post up and over instead of waiting for me to open the gate. Now she won’t go anywhere near the area. Sue. "
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Wow, you are not messing around, that is a well built fence! Good luck keeping the varmints out.
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@AndySmith Have you been happy with your setup? I am looking at this package for temporary fencing.
https://www.pasturefence.com/SolarPowerFenceCharger-SilverStreak.html
I can’t find any specs on the solar panel, but it looks much smaller than yours. I will disconnect the fence during the day, it will only be used in summer and fall, and never more than a mile of fence. Guessing I don’t need a very big panel.
I could save some money buying the same unit as you have, and a solar charger separate. But I read somewhere that the higher charge voltage from the panel could damage the fence charger. What voltage is your controller putting out?
Thanks.
Just a couple recommendations on the solar side.
Get a solar charge controller that will cut out the load when the battery voltage drops to a certain level. This is particularly important for lead acid batteries.
If the electric fence draws more amperage than your charge controller is rated for, use a relay that is closed by the load circuit of the solar charge controller. This way when the battery gets too low, the charge controller will turn off the fence. You can also install a switch on the line to the relay so you can disable the fence while leaving the solar charger running.
If you have lithium batteries this isn’t a big deal, but lead acid batteries will not last long getting fully discharged.
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Good suggestion on the charge controller. We have had issues with this at work for an off grid water valve opening setup.
I’m not getting effective output from the charger at the moment. I suspect it’s the charger, but I’m not sure. I’m thinking of replacing the 2 Joule Silver Streak with a 5-7 Joule charger. Silver Streak doesn’t have anything with that much output so I’m thinking of the Cyclops that Opea made note of. I’m in the process of planting out the orchard and putting up the fencing around it, so I’m dealing with much more than just the nursery bed fence I had before.
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A 7 joule charger is MUCH ! Better For deer !
Well worth the investment, it will make all your other work pay off better. Also use several good ground rods , your fence is only as good as the ground…
I have have not found a battery/solar charger that is as reliable or as powerful as one that runs on 120vac.
We ran 200 feet of UF cable to the fence at the orchard after we had lots of problems with the solar charger but we still have a battery/solar charger in another area. The 110 also powers a “dancing man” for bird control which helped pay for the cable.
We have had good luck with Parmmak chargers too and the local farm supply store is good about replacing them for free when they fail after a couple of years. The 8 Joule Cyclops 12 V charger look great but expensive
I cant speak to solar or battery fence energizers, but I’ve been dealing with electric fence for livestock since the early 1970s.
The old ‘weed-burner’ types absolutely could start a grass fire. The newer high voltage/low impedance ones…not so much. I don’t even notice them ‘burning’ weeds/grass in contact with the wire… they just power through it, and vegetation on the fence does not ‘short’ the fence nearly as badly as it did with the old-style fence chargers.
Conventional wisdom, at least for livestock fencing, was that if you had to run a lead-out wire less than a quarter mile to the fence, you were better off with a 120v AC energizer than a solar/battery energizer. IDK if that tenet has changed in the past 25 yrs or not.
Our latest one is a 24-joule model, with remote (love, love, love that! can turn the energizer off from the other end of the farm, make repairs, turn it back on, with push of a button!); will push upwards of 10K volts when properly grounded - grounding is perhaps the most important part of the system! I have six 8ft ground rods driven so that they are ‘watered’ by rain running off the 30 ft downhill side of the stall barn, plus another six 8 ft ground rods buried in the trench beneath the drain tile leading out from the wash stall and tackroom sink - I used perforated drain tile, turned upside down, for the express purpose of ‘watering’ the ground rods & their connecting wires.
Until the last year or so (we sold the cows in 2019), we were energizing about 20 miles of wire. I’ve since disconnected most of it, so keeping electrified fence clear is a smaller task.
To effectively contain/exclude cattle, you need ~2500 volts, consistently. Goats, sheep, deer, etc. scoff at that… you need more like 7500 volts, minimum, to make them think twice about challenging it.
Kencove has been our ‘go-to’ source for electric fencing materials and equipment for 20+ years. Good products, good service.
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I wish I had a power source at the orchard site, the site is over a mile from the house. Unfortunately my only option is solar/battery.
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Next door neighbor did not control the weeds around his fence well and started a small fire with one of the old type chargers and broom straw, The rural FD put it out quickly but It could have been a problem.
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Yep. I encountered that on more than one occasion, back in the day, when the wire would get knocked loose and fall into dry grass.
An aside… many years ago, when we first started out with electric fencing, my dad & uncle… masters at making do with what they had on hand… had a bunch of old galvanized pipe and old tractor tire inner tube on hand… thinking that rubber is a good insulator… they drove lengths of galvanized pipe in the ground for posts, wrapped the top of those pipes with a couple of thicknesses of innertube rubber, and fastened the electric fence wire with a wrap of fence wire around the rubber. Shortly after turning on the fencer, we started smelling burning rubber, and upon investigation, the rubber ‘insulators’ were starting to smoke! Turns out that rubber is not really all that good an insulator… or at least not for an old weed-burner type electric fence charger.
I assume you are going to use the lower portion as your ground wire. I not anything not touching the ground will not get shocked. The ground is as important as the hot wire
We still haven’t got the hot wire up yet. Too many other things which were higher on the priority. Now we are too busy during the growing season to work on the fence.
Yes I plan to use the lower fence as the ground, and may install some ground rods for extra grounding. I have mixed feelings about installing the ground rods. The fence and T-posts probably provide plenty of grounding for coons and possums, but I’d also like to keep the neighbor’s livestock away from the fence.
Livestock naturally push into a fence when they eat, which slowly causes the fence to lean. Normally, on a T-post fence, a wooden post is sunk every 100 feet to add support to keep the fence from leaning due to livestock. I didn’t put in the wooden posts every 100 feet because it’s not meant to be a livestock fence. But my neighbor has livestock, so I’d like to keep their livestock off the fence.
Lucky,
That was some really good information. Thanks for posting that.
The one part that I would disagree with is the recommendation for Kencove. Their products are cheap, but don’t hold up. I put the original field fence up about 2-3 years ago (purchased from Kencove). Last summer when we were putting up the lower portion (the fence to keep out the coons and possums) we noticed the bottom strand of the field fence was badly rusted anywhere where a little dirt was covering the bottom wire of the field fence. Some of it was almost rusted through, and only been up for one year! I was very disappointed.
Their fence is supposed to be Class 3 galvanized (the best class for fencing) but it doesn’t hold up. Conversely, when we were putting up the field fence, we first had to take down some older RedBrand fence. The bottom wire on that fence was completely buried by silt in some places. The RedBrand fence had zero rust issues where it was below ground. It was a pretty old fence.
Also RedBrand has a heavier gauge wire on the top and bottom strands of their field fence, whereas Kencove field fence doesn’t.
I also bought some of the barbed wire from Kencove. The only high tensile barb wire they offer is 15-1/2 gauge. I was a little bothered by the small size, but I used some of it anyway. I’m not happy with it either. The barbs aren’t very sharp at all, and they don’t stay in place. On top of that, their barbed wire has loosened up excessively in a short amount of time.
For the rest of the barbed wire portion of the fence we switched to Herdsman barbed wire. They carry 14 gauge high tensile. Barbs are much sharper and the fence doesn’t loosen like the stuff I got from Kencove.
As you can tell I’m really disappointed in the Kencove products I’ve purchased. As you know, most of the cost in fencing is the labor involved, so I’d prefer to use quality materials. I’ve not found them at Kencove.
I’ve not purchased any electric fence products from Kencove, so I can’t speak to that. Maybe they make better electric fence products, but their field fence and barbed wire fencing is pretty sorry.
If you are going to buy barbed wire spend the extra money and buy the American made wire it is heavier and last longer than the cheap imported wire.