electric fence grounding....

and rocks! i want to place my solar charger in a spot that has rock about 6 inches beneath the soil. my puny arms coupled with a driver have been unsuccesful in driving t-post adn I am expecting no less with the grounding rod. what gounding options are avialable?

Do you have anything like a creek nearby?

Do you have more grounding rods?  Having three one foot deep grounding rods will be just as good as one three foot deep grounding rod.

Can you use pos/neg fence?

Is this a portable zapper or a fixed zapper?  Can you put the ground in another spot?

If fixed, I once laid out a plan to dig trenches for another project and lay a bare ground wire in that as long as the trench was open.

aaaarghhhhhh.

so I have been looking at grass and buying hay all week! we bought a second grounding rod. didn't work. moved the grounding rod. didn't work. unhooked part of the fence. didn't work. changed the ground, jumper wires and lead out. didn't work.

hooked up my old continuous charger. works!

called the company for the solar charger and said we got a bad charger. the tech insisted it was fine. said my goats were just tough. I said the voltemeter shows nothing. he said we can't use a regular voltmeter and we need a specialized fence tester. I said. my chickens eat under it. hmmmmm. I am touching it now. hmmmmmmm. still he said to get a fence tester. so I did. hooked it up yesterday. nothing. zip nada. nothing coming directly out of the charger. battery tests fine. ground works fine for the old one. (too small for the area though). I am hooking it up one more time this morning so that I can have the tech on the phone while I am testing it.

of course. the ponies and the goats have 30 acres to run and be merry on. guess where they go when I let them loose? the neighbors so
I have been alternating between feeding hay (if I have to be gone all day) and playing shepardess.

Where did you get the zapper?

bought the zapper a tractor supply and they were quite easy to deal with when I took it back after talking to the factory tech several times he determined that it had a bad transformer. ha. all that and it was the charger after all. I walked back and forth on that fence line checking for problems and grounded and re grounded that SOB for a week!  changed all the lead, jumper and ground wires three times and it was the damn charger after all. I exchanged it for another one that was larger (take out my frustration on the goats....I want  them to fry!!) it worked beautifully right out of the box before it had even set in the sun to charge for a few days. only had one escapee and he hasn't tried it again  since. except for my little pygmy goat pet that can fit under the lowest wire without even touching it.

Has anyone here ever used electric mesh fencing?  Everyone around here uses the straight flat tape stuff on the reels, or the bare wire kind.  All the animals that I would want to keep in or out can just walk/crawl under a tape.

Sue

I was looking at that stuff. I have read on other forums about people succcesfully using it. I want it for poultry (I suppose you do too for your girls)

actually I know exactly what I want. I want step in posts with retractable wire. just like a blind would operate where you pull at an angle and it sucks the wire back into the posts. my million dollar idea. it would be sooooo much easier to manage rotational grazing.

That sounds so perfect!

Sue

everyone can start rolling their eyes about my wild hairs again! it would be really cool to just grab a post give a little tug and have it draw in to the next post in line. they would need to snap togther somehow into a tidy bundle also then when its time to reset in a new area, snap one off. stick it in the ground, see which post is next inline and stretch it out. no more tangled mangled wire, or dragging wire and posts around getting caught on everything when its time to move the fence.

They've long had clotheslines like that.  http://www.clotheslineshop.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=C&Product_Code=15-7&Category_Code=OCI

Sue

I've used the electric mesh fencing.  I even got the pos/neg stuff.  Good for goats. 

Susan Monroe wrote:
They've long had clotheslines like that.  http://www.clotheslineshop.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=C&Product_Code=15-7&Category_Code=OCI

Sue

holy s***! it would be nothing to turn that into an electric fence! hmmmmmm

We have had pretty fair luck with a Parmak solar fence charger. Got it from Attwoods in Sapulpa. About $20.00 cheaper than Tractor Supply in Edmond,OK, and when the first one went bad they didn't question me, just told me to go back there and get another one. Here in Creek County we have lots of rock just under the dirt so finding a place to drive the ground rod into the ground was tricky too.