T-posts and wood posts: which goes where, and why it matters

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Research. These posts are going in the ground this season. This is the reasoning we used to decide the mix, written before the first winter has had a chance to disagree with it.

A t-post costs a few dollars. A wood post costs several times that, plus the digging.

The temptation on a new place is to do the whole thing in t-posts and be finished by the weekend. That is a mistake, but not the mistake most people expect — it is not that t-posts are weak. It is that they are the wrong shape for one specific job.

What each one is actually for

T-posts hold the line up. They are line posts. They are quick, they drive by hand, and a fence full of them will stand for years.

Wood posts hold the line tight. They are corner posts, end posts, and gate posts — anywhere the fence changes direction or stops. That is where all the tension in a fence ends up, and tension is what a t-post is worst at resisting.

Put a t-post on a corner and one of two things happens. It leans, slowly, over a season, and your fence goes slack. Or it comes out.

The rule that keeps it simple

Wood at the ends, the corners, and the gates. T-posts in between.

That is most of what there is to know. The arguments after that are about spacing.

Spacing

• 8 to 12 feet for most livestock fence on flat ground.
• Closer across a dip, because the fence wants to lift there and the posts are what stops it.
• Wider is possible with high-tensile wire, which holds its own line — some setups run 20 feet or more. That is a system decision, not a post decision.

The part that costs money later

The brace assembly at the corners. A corner post on its own, however big, will eventually be pulled over by the fence. It needs a horizontal brace to a second post and a diagonal wire tensioned across.

It is fiddly, it takes twice as long as you think, and it is the difference between a fence that is tight in five years and a fence that is a chore in two.

Nobody sells you a brace. You build it, out of two more posts and some wire, and it is the least glamorous afternoon of the whole project.

Driving them

A manual post driver — the heavy sleeve you lift and drop — will do a small run and will also do your shoulders in. It is the right first purchase for a place this size, and it is on the list in barn and shop.

For anything past a few dozen posts, borrow a tractor-mounted driver if you can. Buying one is a decision for an operation considerably larger than ours.

What we are doing

What goes where is decided. How many of each is not. Wood at the ends, the corners and the gates, t-posts between them, tighter spacing where the ground dips — that argument is finished on this page. Turning it into numbers takes a walk down the line, and the line has not been walked. Until it has we cannot say how many wood posts the corners and gates come to, how many t-posts fall between them, or how many of those land in a low spot.

Once the posts are in, this section gets the counts, the spacing they ended up at, the brace assemblies at the corners, what the materials came to, and the date.

We will update this after the first freeze-thaw, which is the season that tells you whether posts were set deep enough. The Research tag comes off then, not on the afternoon the last post is driven. A post that stands the day you set it has proved nothing.

Before you buy

• Count corners, ends and gates first. Those are your wood posts, and there are always more than you guessed.
• Budget the brace materials at the same time.
• Buy a few more t-posts than the measurement says. There is always a place that wants one more.

— Chris D., McEwen, Tennessee