[Jacob-list] Electric Fence

[chris.underwood]

At 09:06 18/06/00 -0400, you wrote:
>I haven't used my electric fence charger since last Winter. I hooked it
>up this weekend, checked to make sure that none of the lines were
>grounding out against the fence, made a good connection to the ground
>pole, and plugged it in. 
>
Hello Paul

In my experience to lose voltage like that can only be caused by either
leakage from the hot wire to earth, a broken hot wire or a poor earth
return.  You've checked for leaks and breaks so you must have a high
resistance (poor)earth return.  A sure sign of this is if the voltage as
measured along the fence shows a steady fall as you move away from the
power unit.  If the voltage only falls slowly then suddenly drops
significantly then you either have a short to earth, long damp grass etc in
contact with the fence, or you have a break in your hot wire at that point. 

I have got into the habit of running an earth wire at the bottom of my
fences which is in contact with or buried in the ground for most of the
length of each fence which I connect the earth of the power unit to.  Hence
I always have good voltage between the hot wire/s and earth particularily
in summer when the ground resistance goes up as the ground drys out.

As I can get very high winds at times and also have very long fences I
always use standard Hi-tensil fencing wire on insulators, the tape has too
much wind resistance and gets blown to pieces.  I don't usually have any
problems except for storm damage to the system when things get blown into a
fence shorting it out, or a tree falls on one and breaks it.

Hope this is of some help.

Chris