We are specialised rural metal fencing installers however we do also build rural fences using concrete fence posts.

A somewhat newer development is to use concrete posts instead of the traditional timber posts for your rural fence.

Concrete fence posts where actually been first manufactured in about 1915, however they have only started being a viable option in Australia from the 80’s I think. Many of the early concrete posts came with a few problems I’ve been told by people who have been in the industry for a long time. A couple of big issues were that they would explode in our hot bush fires and cattle rubbing against them would often break the post and it would only flat on a single piece of re-reinforcement wire in the post.

These kind of problems have now been overcome by using quality Australian made posts that are:

• wider – 130mm for fence posts and 170mm for strainers
• use 40 – 50 MPa concrete (that’s about 3 times stronger than regular concrete) and
• have a sophisticated wire re-enforcement system (pre-stressed 2 x 5.05mm high tensile reinforcing strands)

A typical installation looks like this:

So why use concrete posts instead of hardwood timber posts for your rural fence line?

Lets get the bad news out of the way first. Yes, these are more expensive than White Mahogany, generally the best choice timber for rural fencing. However the gap is smaller than you might think, about 20% more.

So what does the extra investment deliver?

Generally you will get a fence that will last longer, expect about 40 to 50 years. Timber fences used to have the same lifespan and still can in ideal conditions, however if you have a White Ant or termite problem, water logged soil or acidic soil this will cause your posts to deteriorate much quicker. Another issue is that most trees harvested for fence posts are immature now-a-days and have a considerable amount of soft heart and plenty of sap wood on the outside, hence reducing their lifespan. This often means that a hardwood fence might only last 10-15years.

In actual fact we did a job in Millfield not long ago and replaced a timber fence that had been installed 12 years ago and it was in really bad disrepair and no longer could be relied upon to keep the customer’s cattle away from the busy road passing their property! They picture at the top of this page shows the new fence we built for them. You can contact us here to discuss your fencing requirements.