The Front Fence

OOPS!	When building a fence, the primary rule WAS "The deeper the posts are set, the stronger the fence will be." The new primary rule IS "CALL BEFORE YOU DIG!" I dug the holes with manual post hole digger. Ro tried to talk me into renting a gas powered auger, I said I would, if she drove my truck. So there I was digging away manually, one hole down (24") four more to go. In the very last inches of digging the second hole, the sound of the digger went from thump-thump-thump to thoop-thoop. What the hell is that? I looked down into the 231/2" deep hole and saw something shiny, I poke at it and discover that I have cracked open a conduit with 220 volt wires in it. Ro called the city and a guy came out to look at it. He dug out my nice round post hole into a 1 foot x 2 foot x 2 foot crater in our front yard. He couldn't fix it because "he was an overhead wire guy and the underground wire guy doesn't work on Sundays." I waited for the guy to come out and fix it on Monday so we could finish the fence. By 11:00 no-one showed up. I called the city and explained what happened. I got stuck in phone transfer hell having to explain myself to the next person in line and listen to them say "You know, you are supposed to call before you dig." I finally get the person I need to talk to, after having him say: "You know, you are supposed to call before you dig" I asked if anyone was coming out to fix it. He send he would send a "locator" out to take a look. I told him you don't need a locator, I KNOW where the wire is. So then the locator guy comes out and looks at it and he says "You know, you are supposed to call before you dig." The locator calls another guy who sends out two other guys. The two guys come out, slap a sleeve around the pipe and then slobber some goo into the hole. They told me, "You know, you are supposed to call before you dig" and then wished me a good day and good luck with the fence project.
	All the posts are set 18" deep. That gives us 6" (hopefully) of space between the posts and the wire running under our front yard. The posts are 4x4 pressure treated fir. I don't know if they are better than redwood or just cheaper. I figured I would give them a try. I had to set the middle post in that crater shown above. It took FIVE BAGS OF CONCRETE! Between the posts are redwood 2x4's. Along the bottom are more redwood 2x4's. The top is made from two 11' long redwood 2x6's scarfed together in the center. The top is smooth and the end near the sidewalk has a rounded end.
	The lattice panels are held in by 3/4" square redwood 'sticks'. Most of them had to be custom fit since each section is a little different. After the hole with the wire incident, I wasn't really concerned with accuracy anymore. The nice thing about the lattice is that it was scrap from one of the patio projects. There's Ro on the right showing off the fence Vanna style. She's elated because our junk pile is finally gone.