Guy at the hardware store in Red Deer told me my fence posts were set too shallow, and I've been chewing on it all month | Alberta Homeowners - Free To Speak
Guy at the hardware store in Red Deer told me my fence posts were set too shallow, and I've been chewing on it all month
About three weeks back I was loading 8 bags of quick-set concrete into my truck at the hardware store in Red Deer and this older fella in a grease-stained jacket asked what it was for. I told him I was resetting a leaning corner post on my back fence, and he said "buddy, if you only go 2 feet down in this clay, she'll lean again by next spring." He said he's been fencing around here since the 80s and always goes 4 feet with a wider hole at the bottom. I went home and measured my other posts and sure enough most of them are barely 2 feet in. Now I'm wondering if I should dig up the whole line or just fix the one. Has anyone dealt with this clay and does the deeper hole really hold better?
Read somewhere that clay soil shrinks and swells with the seasons, so a shallow hole basically works its way loose over time. Going deeper gets you past that top layer that moves around so much. Fixing just the one post might buy you a year, but the rest will keep leaning one by one.