How to fix leaning Colorbond fence?

[dant]

Hi,

3 posts in my colorbond fence are leaning.  It was a result of somebody falling into it with force.

I made an effort over the weekend to dig down to the footers.  I only got about 500mm before I ran out of puff.  It is thick clay for the most part.  I have done this on my side and 2 of the posts on my neighbours side (although not as deep on his side as the footer starts nearer the surface due to slope down to his yard).

My thinking was that if I left enough space on my side and got below the footer I could lean some 4x2 against my neighbours side at say 45 degrees, stake the end and force it down the end against the post with a mallet thereby realigning the fence vertical.

Is this a reasonable approach?  I didn't get around to it and now I'm second-guessing myself and whether I should just pay someone with the right tools to fix it.

The water was foolishly added by me as I thought it would help when I went to try and straighten it but never got there.

[dant]

Thanks @Nailbag 

Yeah - don't want to remove anything if possible

[dant]

@Nailbag @Dave-1 @MikeTNZ @EricL 

Ended up fixing it.  Post hole digger with 80mm auger to widen the holes and dig out the edges near the footers.  Then a medium sized hammer drill with SDS chisel and point bits to break up the footers a bit.

Had to remove panels as our land is higher than the neighbour (plinth buried on our side but completely exposed on his side).  So leaning the fence back was too hard for 3 panels that had pebbles/crusher dust against the side we were trying to lean towards.  Once panels were removed the posts were able to be levelled easily (after we removed most of the pebbles and crusher dust that were piled against the plinths on our side). 

In fact, if both yards were level with each other and there was nothing against the plinth on either side of the fence, I suspect I wouldn't have needed to go anywhere near as deep, nor break up the footers as much as I did (and maybe not even had a need to remove panelling)

70x35 posts from Bunnings fit perfectly in between the lips of adjoining posts so once the angle is good a stake at the base to hold it in place and then small adjustments of the post up and down are easy.  The friction holds the post in place beautifully.

Unfortunately it rained last night a couple of hours after finishing up.  But the footers seem solid.  I went overboard and just completely filled the holes up.

Thanks for the help.

[Nailbag]

What an awesome and mammoth effort you have gone to @dant. Definitely sounds like it will be more solid than originally built. Well done. And if you used rapid set concrete then the rain would have had little to no impact. And if not, the structure itself and the newly packed full depth deep holes will be holding it all true until the concrete fully sets in 24-48hrs. It actually keeps hardening for up to nearly a month.

Nailbag

[MitchellMc]

Great work @dant!

Many thanks for the update.

Mitchell

[Dave-1]

Morning @dant 

Thats a solid effort and Id be feeling a lot happier knowing its been fixed properly!

Yeah higher level soil would have been an issue for sure, Are you thinking of anything in the future to mitigate it or niot worried now that your posts are solid as?

Dave

[dant]

Thanks all for the help.

@Dave-1 I think I will just put some small pebbles in the gap now.  Initially I had crusher dust and pebbles left over so just threw them in the gap.  I think that contributed to some of the corrosion.  I will dig up the remainder and just have pebbles.

For anybody viewing this in the future - if I were to do it again, I would go:

• Post hole digger until I hit the footers
• Use an 80mm auger and dig down around the edge of the footers until I had some good spacing between the edge of the hole and the footer
• As I got deeper use a medium-sized hammer drill with point and chisel bits to break up the footer a little (l learnt you really need the space around the footer to help break it up).  I had a Taurus one with SDS bits.
• Keep trying to lean the fence with bracing if the yards are level once some of the top half of the footer is broken up
• Continue digging, breaking up and attempting to realign until you can.  I had to go very deep due to the soil/pebbles against my side.
• If it won't lean and you've gone down pretty deep (600mm) take off the panels and lean the post by itself.  In fact you are bothered I reckon taking the panels off before getting too deep will see success once you've broken a fair amount of footer up.

You can see how high I went with the concrete in my neighbours holes and how big the end hole was!

This is because of the height difference, which meant I couldn't go as high on my side.  But the holes are deep and I used 8 bags all up.

And those 70mm posts work so well wedged in between the adjoining fence posts.

Cheers!

[Nailbag]

Hi @dant 

I think if you ran some garden edging extending off the line off each end of the paved area and filled that with pebbles to making it a feature would look quite good.

Nailbag