Cassilhaus: WE'RE DONE!!!! (Deer Fence 3rd and final phase)

It has been a long haul but after 4 months and a ton of work we have finished our deer fence and HOPEFULLY we can start to do some planting without serving dinner for our deer friends. Details of the project are in the previous post. We spent several months off and on welding the 11 static panels and the gigantic gate door.

The ever wonderful Joe Galas at Monkey Bottom Studios where we fabricated the fence/gate helped us put together the huge gate by mounting the 4x4 steel post we would ultimately use on the site in his studio. (pardon the crappy cell phone pictures. I forgot my camera)

Here's Joe installing one of the hinges.

We bailed on torch cutting the verticals and had our good friends at Vega Metals cut them with their computer driven water jet cutter. Boy that was a no brainer--only wish we had come to our senses earlier. Ellen had to draw the jagged line in CAD so we would still get the "random" edge we wanted.

We scavenged some old rebar from our house construction and welded two pieces on each static section to hold it in the concrete.

A few weekends ago we rented a trailer and brought all the parts of our creation home.

Here's the finished gate. It is a pivot gate and is hinged about 1 foot in from the end and mounted on a 12' 4x4" steel pole set in concrete. Note the height change on the bottom left to accommodate the step up at the rock wall.

I painted the bottoms of the static pieces that would be underground with a metal primer.

We knew to get the accuracy we wanted on the installation that we were going to have to find a professional to help us. I did the math on the number of bags of cement I was going to have to mix and the concrete truck was looking pretty sweet. After asking for referrals we got connected to Peter Yeganian at Mulberry Restoration and he and his crew (Steven, Cappy(sp?), and Travis) did a fabulous job in just two days. Using a Bob Cat with a giant auger they made a large trench on either side of our cattle grates, set and braced the gate post and static pieces, and then did the concrete pour and voila--deer fence!

We gave the concrete a day to firm up and then Joe showed up on Saturday with his new portable welder to weld all of the horizontal connecting pieces between each of the static sections so it looks like a continuous fence. I also spent half the day going around the entire perimeter of the plastic fence and making absolutely sure the rest of the fence was sealed. I repaired some tears where deer had broken through and added ground stakes where they had dug under the fence. I sprayed deer repellent at strategic spots and felt pretty good about the integrity of the fence. I got a wicked case of poison ivy as thanks for my efforts.

It took all three of us to wrestle the gate in place and get the hinges set and welded.

We didn't do a detailed engineering analysis on the gate and were worried that it would sag. Check out the grin on Ellen when she opens the gate for the first time with one finger and it is smooth as glass and perfectly level.

The last step was to weld 4 horizontals on the last static unit with just enough clearance to allow the gate to swing. I had to do some last minute "trimming"

We are very happy with the final product. There are some things we wish we had known at the beginning that we know now but it is enormously satisfying to do a project like this on your own and see it manifested after 4 long months. Ellen's design is brilliant. We wanted the fence to be as transparent as possible and when you are on axis to it it almost goes completely away. We have found a recipe on the web to accelerate the rusting process and that will make it even more invisible as the main thing we are seeing now are the shiny pieces that haven't rusted at all.