Dec. 15, 2024
Read time: 5 minutes and 19 seconds.
tags:My Electric Fence Saga
Dogs, fences, and construction life lessons.
Building things is awesome, especially physical structures. There’s something incredibly satisfying about creating something tangible. I could build software all day, but there’s something at the end of the day that me, as a human being, need from my work is which is accomplishment and satisfaction. Recently, I tackled a project that combined my love for bamboo, the necessity of electricity, and the challenge of containing my “miniature horse” Dobermans. The original project I begin at the beginning of this year, but I have recently had to adapt my methods for a more robust system using steel and concrete for post bases and connecting them in extreme weather type of environment with limited resources. Let’s talk a bit around the original implementation, shall we. 😎
Bamboo is amazing, and they even call it “green concrete.” It’s super strong and grows like crazy. I initially built an electric fence using bamboo, thinking it would be indestructible, and my dogs are a menace to the local cows.I thought, “eh, bamboo is so impermeable and indestructible. But that fence probably lasted, I don’t know, maybe nine months.” The tensile strength of bamboo is stronger than some forms of concrete and I immediately made an effort to deploy these posts quickly and affordably into the ground. It took maybe 4 or 5 days to push these things into the ground. And especially since I tend to travel a lot for work, I basically lived by “Set it, forget it”. Though it didn’t take long for rain, wind and sun to wear at the integrity of my bamboo posts and stalks. I left for work to Canada followed by the Middle East thereafter only to return and find my awesome and great idea was a load of crap. The fence posts had moved from the “tensile strength” of the cord, the fencing brackets had snapped, and the dude who cuts our grass was clearly overpaid since he cut my electric fence line.
Nice… ☠️
I figured, my dogs have been shocked a couple of times so maybe they’ve learned to not be menaces to the neighbours. Well, it’s funny how global intuition sort of works. My Dogs, a week before arriving, had made the great escape to the farms nearby to play with cows. An animal that can run $2000-$3000 dollars.
My Dobermans are strong and playful, which is a problem when there are baby cows around. I needed a more permanent solution to keep my dogs in and protect the neighbor’s livestock. I had to upgrade from bamboo to something much sturdier. The original bamboo fence was replaced with about 100 galvanized steel posts since they didn’t know how to behave with the neighbours and have gotten me into trouble with their shenanigans already. So, I had to basically replace bamboo as the “solution” and instead focus on building something unreal with steel posts. Out with the old, in with the new.
So, a few things had to be adjusted:
I fell in love with this problem for one reason: It was something I knew to solve but I hadn’t done in the past. It was similarly an experiment to the ones I have run more than 1000 times with full stack apps, accessibility and API access.
My property isn’t flat, it’s on a 15% gradient. That makes construction a lot more challenging, especially in the subtropical heat. This project was physically demanding. Which I absolutely loved. So, take the math in a bit:
So, a fun and brutal task to make sure I can make sure I can solve my dog problem once and for all. Here are some of the stats that seemed fun at the time:
One of the funnest projects, mostly because it was so fun to see what your body is capable of if you simply look past the challenges of what you “feel” you’re only capable of. Human beings are incredibly robust. And similar to software problems I see that can be solved with old solutions to new problems is one of the most rewarding moments in my DIY construction career. It has happened to me several times in software, but never in construction until that very moment with the electric fence. Knowing the problems to avoid, especially since I’ve overcome a lot of issues in the past helped me become more capable in construction and building.
Even with experience, things don’t always go as planned. I learned that “green steel” isn’t always the best choice, and sometimes you need good old-fashioned concrete and steel. The job that I thought would take a little, took a lot longer. It took much longer since I had to do the job twice. Not doing the job well the first time cost me double. Not in terms of material, but in terms of time, the most precious resource. Since the installation, the dogs have been able to enjoy the free reign they have on our land, crapping wherever they want all while bring menaced cows down to 0.
Building is a journey of learning and adaptation. My electric fence saga taught me valuable lessons about materials, planning, and the unpredictable nature of DIY projects, while protecting my finances from my dogs. Software sees similar adaptations when we try to solve problems, but taking a pragmatic approach with planning and foreseeing issues is one of the most valuable skills we can have in anything we can virtually build