electric fence grounding.....

I'm guilty of being lazy and cheap on my fences....
I have several small pastures with the biggest being 1/2 mile around the line with all having 3 strands (1" tape).
Chargers are Parmak 6v solar (1.4 joule) and the 12volt auto battery (2.7 joule).

I've got a bad habit of grounding them to a tpost or using the 12 inch or so spike that came with them.
Could use some new tape on some of them, but after reading some, I think the time/money would be better spent on grounding to make the fencers work better (and probably compensate for the cheaper tape I'm using now.

Most cost effective thing available for me is 1/2" galvanized pipe. Farthest distance from ground system would be 300 yds (if that makes any difference). Any ideas on how I could set up a ground that would take care of my needs and keep the cost/material down? Have to do this for 12 places. Couple of them have a 4ft piece of galvanized pipe in the ground and work pretty good but could be better.

Any tips would be great.


Dave

PS,
in reference to my post yesterday about the kid not getting shocked, had a visitor today that we took by the horses. It had rained and was sprinkling a little while we were there. Guy asked the stupid ???? "is the electric on" while standing by a pasture with several horses in it. Wife being quick to point out my fence building skills (or lack of) says "yea, but doesn't work very good if at all"
Guy grabbed ahold to step through and about sh!t his pants........Wife was embarrassed as heck and I laughed so hard I thought I was gonna have a stroke.........

Dave

Dry conditions need better grounding than wet, even damp, conditions. A single strand of 14 gauge bare copper wire extending allong the ground, wrapped around each "T" post for as far as you want to take it helps. Real copper coated 8' or 2.5m ground rods work. but if close to the charger, have limited effect in dry conditions. Jim

So, should the ground rods be located away from the charger? Conditions can get dry, but ground water is high in some of the areas (make a difference when the rod is down to wet ground?).

Dave

I went to a really good Extension class the other night on electric fence. While the speaker was the Gallagher sales rep what he said was good general stuff. They are recommending galvanized ground rods, galvanized wire to the charger, and then on to the fence. He said they are seeing more problems with bi-metallic interference than any other single cause. Of course there will still be the potential for electrolysis from the wire to the tape but a little anti oxidant electrical paste and some heat shrink tubing to keep the water out should take care of that.

I've got a total of 4 energizers at two different farms. Just havent gotten enough built to connect to one at each place. On the main charger, running 8 joules off of 110v I've got 3 ground rods. The remote chargers each have one 8 foot galvanized rod, buried horizontal since we are closer than 8 feet to bedrock. Any of them will shoot a blue arc a quarter inch off the wire.

One of the best things he said in the class was to remind us that what seperates the tigers from the gazelles at the zoo here is 8 strands of electrified high tensile wire.

(quoted from post at 14:34:40 05/01/10) each have one 8 foot galvanized rod, buried horizontal since we are closer than 8 feet to bedrock. .

Click to expand...

How deep?

Dave

I would have one about 50% of the way to the far end if possinble. Galvanixzed pipe is OK, but I would use copper coated steel. Just burried copper wire (or galvanized, which has many more ohms/ft.) along the fence for 30m would probably do as well. Jim

(quoted from post at 14:58:46 05/01/10) Why not use more than one wire & make one hot & one ground?

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I don't know if the electric tape would be as good as wire, but don't want to use wire to avoid injury if a horse does something stupid....Not that any of ours would :roll: :roll:

Dave

Why not use more than one wire & make one hot & one ground?

I'm a Gallagher dealer, download this fencer manual it has a section
on installing a fencer. The grounding is one of the most important
parts.
Gallagher Power fence USA

Are the horses getting out?

I'm not a big fan of the fence tape. I would put a run of solid galvanized wire along with the tape.

People I know with horses don't have any trouble with the horses seeing the plain wire.

One ground rod close to the charger is supposed to be enough, but there are different types of conductive soil, don't know what you have. Wet soil helps with the grounding.

As to depth, regular ground rods are 6 feet long and it is customary to bury them as far as they will go.

KEH

I'm afraid of wire because of injuries.

Have a couple houdini's, mostly foals but have a 3yr old that goes under a fence like a deer.

Dave

Twelve inches or so on the shallow end and 24 inches or so on the deep end. Any deeper here and it takes a jack hammer or at least a backhoe. Any deeper here and you get into a lot of loose rock.

Not an expert but I would think that gavl. pipe would work ok, just use gavl. wire. If I was do'n several of them on the cheap, I'd drive it down 6' or so and wrap a coil of wire around the top and tighten a hose clamp around the coil as tight as you can get it. I have had good luck put'n the ground rods down the eve of a building so the ground stays wet after every little shower.

I have four rods, 20' apart, 8' deep but I just have one big system with one box, not several systems.

Good luck.

Dave

sounds like you fence is not very hot. My horse has got against the wire a time or two and he won't walk between two posts if he thinks there might be a wire there.

Neighbour with many head of stock and even some exotic animals uses old truck radiators buried in the ground for his fence grounds. Lots of surface area there for that purpose.

I have wire fence and the nylon white rope fence with the fine metal wires running through it.The latter is great stuff.I have an old charger that mounts in the barn and plugs in and I ran the ground wire right to ground inside the outlet box.That is one nasty sucker.Now Im as far from a horse expert as you can get,my two ponys have never gone farther than the yard the couple of times they got out in eighr years.Now the neighbors horses when they get out,geesh they go all over heII.Something tells me that when this happens 99% of the time they are looking either for food or love.Anyways Dave,Ive seen some pics of your stock and it looks like you might have some valuable animals,so Id do whatever ever it takes to keep them safe.Because if anything ever happened to any of them it would by far outweigh the cost of proper fencing.

Good Luck
Stan

This is a primate containment fence I built on a former sand pit. Due to dry summer conditions I put galvanized ground rods every 100' and used the lowest wire of the main fence to connect it back to the energizer. The main fence is 15' with alternating hot ground to prevent climbing. 18 joule energizer puts out about 14,000 volt in perfect conditions. When its dry I still get 9,000 volts.
Grounds make all the difference, the better your grounding system, the better your fence works.