Setting the New Fence Posts

June 19, 2025

Big day today – finally, finally, we’re getting our back fence back up. Well, the post part of it, anyways.

Ever since our fence got damaged last year, we were talking about replacing it. A few things happened – we relocated to Georgia for a few months. Then we got back, and then before we knew it Winter showed up, and so we decided to wait until the Spring.

And then I screwed up my back while we were removing the fence posts.

Our plan was to install the new fence before all the plants started to grow. Boy, did we get that timing wrong. Instead of open space, we’re working in the midst of a jungle.

On top of it all – we ordered these fence posts from Home Depot ages ago (placed the order on April 20th, and we didn’t get them delivered until nearly a month later). Because somehow in that process, which was supposed to take 12 days… our order just up and got cancelled.

No one could tell us who cancelled our order. But get this: the order was cancelled, but the delivery wasn’t cancelled. So we kept seeing that our delivery date kept getting bumped forward. And each time we called, we couldn’t get an answer.

And then we had a graduation gauntlet: three graduations in three states, over three weekends [1, 2, 3].

And this brings us to today – with the weather hot, the ground still went from yesterday’s thunderstorm… and no rain in sight. We’re ready to do our cement pour. We have the day off, and Tim graciously offered his help to come and do a lot of the heavy lifting.

Because according to my docs, I’m not supposed to lift anything more than 25 pounds. I’ve been cheating here and there, moving these 50lb bags of concrete. But navigating these bags and pouring them into our tubes is probably pushing what I should be attempting. And Tim’s agreed to help us out.

Before the work, spotted not one but two bunnies in the backyard.

Our backyard is quite the popular hangout spot.

Tubes and posts, ready to go.

Liz dug out all of the post holes (several times at this point). We kept thinking we’re ready, and then something came up – so some of the holes collapsed and required more digging – some just needed a bit of fine tuning.

For this work, we’re using bags of Quikrete fast-setting concrete. There’s no actual mixing needed, as it’s mostly just pouring the bags in dry and adding in water afterwards (though we took on a half bag in, half gallon of water approach).

For our metal posts, we’re using 8″ sonotubes cut down to 3′. We found that we only needed about 2 bags per post hole, leaving a few inches at the top which we’ll cover with soil after the concrete sets.

Overall, we’re just looking at about 20 bags of concrete, over 10 holes, with a bit of gravel thrown in at the bottom. I feel like Liz and I could have tackled this on our own (albeit slowly). But if we did, Liz would have been completely zonked and I likely would have been very sore or made my back situation worse.

20 bags isn’t much at all, especially since there’s no mixing involved. We’re no strangers to big pours, so this one seemed really tiny in comparison.

Liz and Tim, working in the thick of it.

Looking back down the line.

It was around here, sadly, that we discovered our top line was actually snagged on a tree limb. And once we got it off, we realized all of our other posts were pretty far off.

On the plus side, our mistake was fairly consistent. And so we’ll just have to make up for any height differences with some magic with the top rial (and maybe use a 2×6 instead of a 2×4 at the top).

The metal posts, all in! Don’t look too closely at the top string there, we’ll fix that afterwards. We’ll fix the posts in post.

Reader, I was absolutely no help at all today. I had a back support belt on, but didn’t really lift all that much. So for my part, all I did was stand around in my back yard with a girdle on, sweating in the sun. And talking to Liz and Tim about what they were both doing.

To make things worse, once the work was done and we were inside having beer and pizza – I got hit with some pretty bad stomach issues, and spent a good while upstairs in the bathroom. My guess is this was heat related (something similar happened to me during the Cedar Lake Cement Pour).

So I was worse than a foreman. I just stood around, sweated a lot, and then spent time in the bathroom. All while Tim and Liz were doing all the work.

I’m incredibly grateful Tim spent so much of his holiday with us (he was at their Lake House in Indiana, and did a 2+ hour drive to get to our place). And hauled around bags of cement and gravel, on a hot day, venturing into a bed of weeds and shrubs and thorns.

It’s exciting to see these posts finally in place, and us that much closer to having our fence replaced. We’ve still got to order up the actual fencing material. And I’m quite looking forward to the install process, which I’m hoping is going to be easier (and more fun).