A Minor Diversion - Fence Repair!

On Tuesday, we had some Santa Ana Winds, which proceded to blow down a section of fence. It was decided to simply replace the posts at this point in time, but to re-use the horizontals and most of the slats....

Some of the damage

The rest of the damage...

 The far end of the broken fence was still attached to the far post, but I removed the fence segment, so the surving post would not get damaged.

 Now the broken fence segments need to be moved:

Getting there...

Done!

Next, of course, is getting rid of the old footings, a thing that is easier said than done, when one is alone!

The first footing, mocking my efforts to remove it....

After a number of unsucessful attempts, I simply decided to work on the other footings while I thought the problem over. My first thought was to rent an electric jackhammer and deal with the problem that way....

The soil around the other footings is the hard clay soil that is notorious around here... it is decomposed granite, and is impossible to work with hand tools when dry. To address this problem, I used a water drill around each of the footings. This step was necessary, regardless of the final method of dealing with the footings.

Water Drill in action.

 What is a water drill? In this case, a length of pipe, with a hose fitting on one end. Decent for drilling holes in decomposed granite.

A helper came by, with the idea of levering the footings out of the ground, using two crowbars. After some initial resistance on my part, we went at it... and the footing that I struggled with alone came out of the ground in less than 10 minutes! A jackhammer was unnecessary with two people available.

The first footing, no longer mocking anyone...

And the second footing, out and busted apart.

We tested the 12 pound maul we had on the second footing, worked like a charm! Tomorrow, the rest of the footings will come out, and the holes will be allowed to dry. The posts will be set on Saturday, and the fence finished on Sunday.